by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
A fixture of Chicago's DIY scene, Richard Album has been releasing bent pop nuggets since 2012, offering a warped and weird dose of power-pop and lo-fi garage rock, built on his idiosyncratic personality and charm. On Friday, Richard Album returns with Another Album, his latest odyssey of reflective pop sentiment carries a careful balance of goofy joy and depressive pop... and in a timely fashion, there are several songs about Christmas. Richard Album's music definitely has a degree of shtick, but the feelings are genuine and the songwriting is wonderful.
One of those "songs about Christmas" is the latest single, "Storm Troopers," a repetitious and exuberant song formed around one cold realization, "storm troopers come to take your best friend away, on Christmas day". Wether this is a statement on now yearly Christmas time Star Wars movies or something beyond and far more terrifying, we may never know. Richard Album is a mysterious figure with a mysterious mind, and all we can do it is sit back and enjoy as the fuzzy pop song swoons into ramshackle punk and a series of hypnotic vocal repetitions. The video, directed by Sally Lawton, captures Album running (perhaps from Storm Troopers... who can say) in the deep snow amidst some cartoons and a healthy dose of paranoia. What can it all mean? Does any of this matter? Do enjoy.
Richard Album's Another Album is out March 9th via Lost Sound Tapes.