What Is This Heart?
Tom Krell speaks in R&B, cloaked in the reassuring, unassuming wrappings of intimate indie pop. His voice is silky and limber and flows with ease and grace, like the best R&B singers—just without getting lost in the trappings of dance beats and saxophones. The Colorado artist has steadily refined his sound for his third album, “What Is This Heart?”. Krell’s cynical lyrics (“Tell me what love’s supposed to be,” \"Who knows if I love you, baby?”), his regal synth washes (“Face Again” has a stupefying numbers of soundscapes for such a cohesive track), and the collection’s dark, hope-perforated tones (especially on “See You Fall”) are inarguably seductive. Disembodied vocals, fingersnaps, and plentiful reverb might offer no real surprises, but delivering those (masterfully used) alongside sweeps of orchestral grandeur (“Pour Cyril”) and commercial pop sensibilities (“Very Best Friend”) takes special vision. Influences as disparate as Prince, Michael Jackson, Tracy Chapman, and even Whitney Houston have never been treated like this.
What Is This Heart? is an ambitious 21st century pop album that takes influence from artists as varied as Prince, Lou Reed, Burial and Tracy Chapman – creating and inhabiting its very own hinterland of fragility, sexuality and overwhelming joy.
Tom Krell's third album as How to Dress Well is a bolder, more accomplished version of what came before in his catalog. The stylistic range of “What Is This Heart?” lends credence to Krell’s “pop, but not populist” ambitions—if he was to make a superproducer-per-song, blockbuster album, this is how it would likely turn out.
Though Tom Krell is working to ensure How To Dress Well remains an ongoing concern, his project’s legacy has already been cemented. Barring an unexpected reinvention, How To Dress Well will be best remembered as one of the acts responsible for kick-starting indie rock’s unlikely fascination with R&B. That’s a…
So raw and unfiltered is Tom Krell's emotion that to read it on a page can provoke nervous laughter. Yet to hear him sing is still a thing of staggering power.
On Christmas Eve last year, Tom Krell teased fans by using Twitter to boast about upcoming material.
How to Dress Well has proven more versatile than its gauzy early days suggested, when Tom Krell pursued a very specific, very stylized sound that nevertheless pointed the way for many other artists mixing R&B and indie.
"The only bad part about flying is having to come back down to the fuckin' world." The Streetwise-sampled words found on Tom Krell's second full-length album as How to Dress Well have lost no potency in the two years since we first heard them.
Album review: How To Dress Well - What Is This Heart?. Tom Krell’s fragile innocence and tenderness remains as touching as ever...
<p>Tom Krell's third helping of indie-soul is less bleak but equally seductive – in patches, writes <strong>Phil Mongredien</strong></p>
How to Dress Well’s What Is This Heart? is the sound of a one-man band at war with itself.
Review of 'What is This Heart'? the new album from How to Dress well the LP comes out on June 24th via Domino records, the first single is "Face Again"
Heartbroken hipster Tom Krell wants to toughen up – though he is growing and experimenting, writes <strong>Tshepo Mokoena</strong>
Third album of cryptic, brooding R&B from US songwriter Tom Krell. CD review by Lisa-Marie Ferla