Mare

Even without knowing that New Jersey transplant Julian Lynch is a grad student in ethnomusicology at UW-Madison, or that he worked with Smithsonian Folkway Recordings, it’s clear that the guy has spent a lot of time with old dusty records. Windy, field-recordings-esque lo-fidelity, dirt that shakes off every backbeat, and sparse instrumentation inform his second proper album, the excellent and dreamy Mare, sounding less like Lynch recorded the songs recently and more like he stumbled upon them in a basement and is releasing them under his own name.

Due to its fidelity, Mare, along with 2009’s Orange You Glad and his various CD-R releases, is often awkwardly lumped in with chillwave. But Lynch isn’t concerned with creating winsome nostalgia like other chillwavers; he’s distilling multiple genres into a hazy music that is uniquely his own. Traces of soft jazz (“A Day at the Racetrack”), prog-rock (“In New Jersey”), folk-rock (“Stomper”), Brian Eno ambience (“Just Enough”), and stoner-friendly scuzz-rock (“Mare,” “Ears”) permeate on the edges, no style ever dominating the album, each just popping in every now and again.

Mare’s greatest strength is that it never makes concessions to the listener in terms of sing-along moments or songs that are just a remix away from moving asses. Instead, Mare is a densely layered production heavy on mood over all else. It’s also an album that rewards patience; Lynch’s attention to detail makes for an album that reveals a little more of itself on each listen.