Review Summary: A soundtrack of old summer nostalgia.
It’s not hard to imagine Headworms as a soundtrack of summer nostalgia. Like a yellowed, grainy projector film found in an old vault of a family basement, capturing a happiness that existed once in the past… a small child toddling into the arms of her father along a beach...dull perhaps, with age, but filled with an embrace that's hard to turn away from. Despite the double team name, Uzi & Ari is in fact the musical project of Salt Lake City’s talented multi-instrumentalist Ben Shepard. Named after Ben Stiller’s kids in
The Royal Tenenbaums, Shepard’s latest musical incarnation features a lush but delicate mix of folksy-acoustic sounds, shoegaze ambience and electronic tinkering. While it sounds like a mouthful on paper, Shepard is a master (if not sometimes
too good) at keeping his songs tight and focused, and
Headworms glows because of it.
To get the elephant in the room out of the way early,
Headworms sounds sort of like what Radiohead would if they took away some of the more rocky elements of their sound and threw in a stronger shoegaze influence. It’s nearly impossible to miss Shepard’s vocal similarity to Thom Yorke, with his seemingly flat but emotionally brewing voice – and that vibrato! Oh that simmering, warbling vibrato… Of course, while it’s not an exact carbon copy (Shepard’s voice is alot more down to earth and rusty, lacking Yorke’s powerful dynamism), listening to something like “Wolf Eggs” or “Patron Saints”, where Shepard stretches his voice most, it’s just hard not to cry out ‘omg Kid A!’ (but not quite as moving). Headworms even carries with it Radiohead’s awkward sense of intriguing melody - almost always catchy, but never conventional.
Yet to reduce Uzi and Ari to simply a Radiohead clone would be to totally miss Shepard’s own commanding songwriting ability. “Missoula” opens with the album’s trademark jangly, acoustic guitar lines and mellow beats, before diving into tension weaved mix of trumpets, strings and driving drums, all executed with a subtle grace that never comes off as overbearing – although sometimes Shepard’s refusal to completely let loose may make for some wandering minds while listening to this album. Still, songs like “Ghosts on your Windowstill”, with its bright accordions and lightly weaved strings make for a prancy, heartwarming listen, while “Thumbsucker’s” gorgeous, upbeat passages leave Shepard at his most exposed, crying out like a call to arms: “
Lift up your voices now/they’re coming after usss”.
Songs here are intricately textured, with every beat, guitar line and chiming bell adding to their depth and strength – Little things like the light trumpeting on “Papercuts” are pulled off tastefully, while the string arrangements sprinkled throughout never fall into the trap of becoming excessively overproduced. Shepard also seems to have an insatiable love for wind chimed bells, giving the album an air of childlike innocence to match its lighthearted, uplifting spirit. Like baby bear’s porridge, everything here is all… just right. Almost. Sometimes Headworms comes off as
too subtle, and a lack of hooks makes for lingering moments, that don't quite catch catch.
And while it’d be nice to hear a little variation here and there, or even just a little oomph once in a while, Shepard’s latest musical creation actually thrives off its own subtlety, with emotion simmering every so lightly just below the surface. And even then, it probably just isn’t necessary to dig too deep – Headworms, after all, is mostly a collection of incredibly
pretty songs, meant to wash over the air on a lazy summer day. The best part of all this being that while the album carries with it a fragile intimacy that so many strive for, its also surprisingly well fleshed out, with everything carrying a weight that many contemporaries could only wish for. A little gem crying out for love,
Headworms is as breezy and as delicate as an old summer’s glow.
3.6/5
