Getting Dressed
As a project, How To Dress Well has always been about memory. The first release, Love Remains, saw Tom Krell’s craft cluttered and cramped lo-fi recollections of the RnB he remembered. It sounded like someone singing half the words to an Aaliyah track, the sketched melody coming from an FM radio two cars away on a congested summer highway. Drip fed slowly onto the internet via streamed MP3s, the tracks offered listeners a chance to tumble down the aural tunnel of opiate-laden slow jams, the kind of music Krell could remember from 1989. The use of lo-fi recording and ambient noise to mask the vocals and melodies hinted at memories which were only half remembered and possibly better forgotten.
The progressions from the first album to the latest have not changed in the manner of a conventional artist. While some acts might begin to lengthen the tracks or expand their influences, How To Dress Well brought the subject into greater focus. While the structure, the themes and the influences of the act were largely the same, the static and the scratches of the earlier releases began to fade away.
It was like a child breathing on a window and rubbing it with their sleeve, wiping away the clutter and the steam to get a clearer view of what was lurking inside. This was the work of a man slowly refining his recollections, allowing others to glimpse into the past as he managed to throw a new light on what resided within.
There were other motifs. The added strings on Total Loss hinted towards a grander scale and the reverb on What Is This Heart is raised to concert hall levels. There is also an increased accessibility. Not necessarily in terms of making his pop music populist and reductive, but in allowing his audience to become more engaged, to access the emotions which are laid increasingly bare across the steadily familiar framework of How To Dress Well.
While the earlier works might have reminded listeners of trying to make out the pixels in a low resolutions jpg, the newer releases are bringing a greater sense of detail and scale; the resolution is lifted as Krell lets us examine the same memories in increased detail.
How To Dress Well has always had a live presence. While at first it might have seemed an insular and forgotten music – Basinski-disintegrations of teenage cassette mixes – Tom Krell has created a captivating live performance style.
Speaking recently, he admits to “[making] a resolution with myself to be less antagonistic, and to try to be more open and sweet on stage, and to not be defensive.” This lack of defence is apparent. Rather than using the wall of sound and effects to create a barrier between the act and the audience, watching a How To Dress Well concert is a performance based on sharing memories. On looking into Krell’s own past, he vicariously imprints himself and his music onto the memories of the audience.
How To Dress Well is playing at Heaven on the 28th October, tickets can be purchased here.
This post was categorised in Archive.