Review Summary: The guitars rock and snap, the drums are comfortably creative, and Lerner's voice possesses enough wistful emotion that it keeps you hooked and warrants spin after spin after spin.
The range of reactions to the first listen of an album is huge. Sometimes, the music succeeds in grabbing you and forces you to drop everything, whether that's due to its instant brilliance or the fact it's so inescapably bad. Other times, a record starts impressively but drops gradually into the background due to repetition or a drop in overall quality. Telekinesis! is neither of those. While opener Rust gives a good indication of what to expect sound-wise from the Seattle-based 'band' (actually consisting in a recording capacity solely of Michael Benjamin Lerner), it's not a fair representation in terms of quality. It's not until second track Coast Of Carolina speeds closer and gets going that Telekinesis! really demands your attention.
Lerner is one of those songwriters that at once manages to recall vague edges of celebrated acts without ever actually sounding like any of them. Similarities to The Shins, old Death Cab For Cutie and Set Yourself On Fire-era Stars are both plausible and impossible to nail down, as those influences are merged with each other and numerous other sources of inspiration to craft enjoyable, infectious pieces of gold. Telekinesis! is a rather short offering at 31 minutes, but its short, sharp bursts of hummable indie-pop rarely let up. Except geographically (London, Tokyo and Carolina all being on the lyrical map), it's not like Telekinesis cover much ground, but what territory they do occupy is very impressive indeed. From Tokyo's wide explosion of guitars and continuous beat to Awkward Kisser's bouncy keyboard lines and nostalgic lyrics, the mainstays are the ever-present intoxicating melodies and (obviously) Lerner's raw but reminiscing tone. It's less about hooks than it is about gentle, catchy passage after gentle, catchy passage, and it's wonderful to hear such a strategy remain fresh and unpredictable as a result of excellent songwriting and creative musicality.
If there's one thing wrong with this debut album it's that it never seems to offer any sort of closure or completeness. Last track I Saw Lightning, despite being in itself a tender and sweet ballad in the same vein as ones penned by Elliott Smith or Ben Gibbard, doesn't provide a climax or round things off in any way. A number of the songs suffer from the same issue - only All Of A Sudden really seems self-aware enough to let you out from under the relentless momentum, and it's brilliant as a result. But in many ways, the big thing Telekinesis! has going for it is its persistence. The guitars rock and snap, the drums are comfortably creative, and Lerner's voice possesses enough wistful emotion that it keeps you hooked. There's a lot of bedroom-style indie-pop out there which falls back on the same hackneyed techniques, but despite not bringing anything particularly new to the table it's impossible to deny songcraft as good as Lerner's. Just over half an hour's worth of this sort of music could easily pass you by and never be touched again, but Telekinesis! is impressive and heartfelt enough to warrant spin after spin after spin.
