Checking the liner notes of
Porcelain Raft's debut album
Strange Weekend reveals that Mauro Remiddi recorded all the music and vocals in a Brooklyn basement during a two-month span. If you didn't see that, you could probably guess…at least about the basement part. Remiddi's sound is very insular and bathed in reverb and effects, yet still intensely personal and vaguely confessional. It's like he's a
Panda Bear who digs
Donovan more than he does
Arthur Russell; the sounds are always in service of the songs instead of the other way around. The important part of the equation is the short amount of time Remiddi spent recording the album. Rather than tinkering forever or wasting time adding more and more layers, there is a tight focus to the songs and the sounds that gives the album a nice punch and immediacy that many bedroom/basement dreamers can't quite grasp. Remiddi is able to almost flawlessly balance being able to craft beautiful backgrounds for his songs and making sure these sounds don't get in the way of the songs themselves. It's a trick that isn't easy to pull off and it's doubly impressive that he's able to maintain it over the course of the album. A few of the songs stand out as possible mixtape staples: the gently strutting "Unless You Speak from Your Heart," which oddly enough sounds like a
T. Rex groover filtered through Brooklyn murk; the quietly majestic "Drifting In & Out," and the girl-group-in-a-wind-tunnel "The End of Silence" all fit the bill nicely. Along with these easy to swallow gems, the record is loaded with deceptively powerful songs that ground the album in real emotion and show that Remiddi isn't just fooling around with sound: the sluggish, hip-hop inflected "Is It Too Deep for You?"; the achingly tender "Backwards," and the album's last song "The Way In" are all examples of Remiddi's depth and the deceptive emotional pull of the album.
Strange Weekend is a very impressive debut album, full of craft, emotion, and songs that you'll want to listen to again and again.