The Iranian-American singer-songwriter, star producer and Vampire Weekend co-founder Rostam Batmanglij’s third solo LP mixes Americana with Persian sounds in a mellow, beautiful reflection of love songs also inspired by challenging, changing times. Gorgeous opener and single Like A Spark is reminiscent of early 70s Van Morrison in the guitar arrangements. The more upbeat but also restless style Back of A Truck is a fuses alt-country-rock and bluegrass with Persian sounds, with Amir Yaghmai of The Voidz on acoustic and electric saz throughout: “Sometimes I feel like I’m a rolling stone not ready to head home.” Throughout the album there’s a sense of movement, change and travel. Different Light is gentle acoustic folk-country with a wistful reflections: “And after all we all belong from dust to dust and ash to urn / And after all we’ll all return to wherever we had started from.” Musically the style changes completely on the lively chamber pop, with orchestral strings, piano and clarinet and a galloping train rhythm of Hardy, joined by Clairo on backing vocals, while the lyrics also capture and sense of simultaneously going forward and looking back, of a duality of feelings: “But there’s a part of me that’s waiting and there’s a part of me that ain’t looking back / A part of me believes in fate and / A part of me thinks that you can’t plan.” From here the album gradually slows and becomes more minimal, sadder, and reflective, The more stripped back Forgive Is To Know is more about changing perspective than place: “A thing about forgiveness is that it asks for change / Where once you felt a victim now you don’t see it that way.” To Feel No Way, with gentle piano and brushed percussion, has a bittersweet sense of a loss of communication: “Once there was a simple way to talk through anything / To forgive the mistakes we made and fall back asleep again.” The slow country of The Road To Death and the strolling, the simple drumming of the fragile Come Apart continue to shed instruments, before closer The Weight gathers into a sense of hope with a satisfying fusion of cultural styles, with that Persian saz getting a lovely solo and layering, mixing acoustic guitars and banjo: “You feel the weight come down to you / And you know it to be true / You got courage on your side.” Out on Matsor Projects.
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