meloncauliflower:

Favorite Music of 2011 Project

Album: Roommate // guilty rainbow

“Jesus saved the Jesus freaks” oozes Kent Lambert so cryptically, over a smooth and sinister beat, in the opening line of the album. “Heaven help this heavy heart / help it empty out, before the party starts.” His oracular delivery slices like a knife. A menacing sound mushrooms, “I can’t believe that you’re really so unconcerned / Can’t you see how the cloud of our dominion billows and burns?” He bites so silkily, so sinisterly, “I don’t believe that you’re really in headsplitting pain. / And if its true, I’m confused / Why are we throwing this party again? / When you are wasted you’ll laugh in my face till I’m numb / everyone’s racist here / every one prays for every one.”

“August Song” bleeds eerily, steeping in chromatic limbo. Again, like the rest of the album, the mood is largely driven by the immaculate relationship between Kent’s vocal tonality and disposition, the music, and the lyrical content. He oozes, at a distance, wrapped in a psychedelic cloud, inauspiciously, “one of the best friends I ever had, he has a very very small brain, I can hold it in the palm of my hand.” The music glides eerily in a soft nightmarish manner, he croons, so beautifully, so presciently, “No one understands why kittens pur / and why people cry / no one understands why. no one understands—no one understands—no one understands… no one understands why.”

It’s a lyrical bite and the smoothness of his delivery that makes this album so evocative, so emotional, so effective. On Flicker Flame, Kent’s sings “Somebody told me this world was mine. They lied. They lied.” The music claws in this curious dream world, until you realize this dream world is the real world.

Sampled Track: “Flicker Flame”

(August)