(03.04.07) Roll up for the latest album by Jimmy Tamborello, also known as Dntel, one third of the band Figurine, and also the guy who has been unwittingly heard by a trillion American teenagers providing back-up for Ben Gibbard’s vocals in the Postal Service. The album is a collection of songs sung by Jimmy himself, which, to my knowledge, is a first. He has a fairly tuneless, dispassionate delivery, which in places reminds me of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, and in others of Kompakt records stars like Mattias Aguayo.
The music is predictably excellent. Crisp and layered, but with a few strange stutters and crackles to keep it from being too polished. I’m not 100% convinced of the quality of the songs themselves, unfortunately. The title of the album’s opener, “5556688833,” refers to the number combination you have to punch into a cell phone to spell “love” in a text message, and the lyrics detail the collapse of a relationship driven largely via text. It’s a cute idea, but I don’t think either the lyrics or their delivery really pay off.
In the balance the weakness of both James Figurine’s vocals and his song-writing drags down the quality of the beautiful music. I imagine I’ll be listening to his Dntel material or even the Postal Service’s Give Up (Sub-pop) a lot more regularly. However, the album’s highlight, “Apologies,” is so strong that I don’t regret the purchase in the slightest. Jimmy wistfully suggests “apologies are gifts / without them, you’d be on your own” over a straight up tech-house thump and a nice, growling bass-line. The lyric and its fragile delivery really connect on this occasion. It’s music for awkward nerds to dance to in their bedrooms, and all power to them!
Mistake Mistake Mistake Mistake is out now on Plug Research. Buy it at Amazon.com.
