Telekinesis!
Telekinesis
Merge

3.5 out of 5 stars

While many would argue the slew of bands emerging from the Pacific Northwest these days capture a sound unattributable to any single place or time (see all press regarding Fleet Foxes), there’s undoubtedly a certain breed of power-pop inextricably affiliated with everything Chris Walla (Death Cab for Cutie, The Decemberists) touches. He’s clearly found a winning formula, and now, it appears, an apprentice.

The eponymous debut (just add exclamation point!) from Merge Records greenhorn and Death Cab acolyte Telekinesis, also known as 22-year-old Seattle native Michael Lerner, is a promising exercise in pop songwriting, with Walla’s uncongested arrangements giving the production just enough edge to keep all the head bobbing hipster-friendly. With each song tracked and mixed to analog tape over the course of a single day, the album carries a unique sense of movement and spontaneity that is immediately enthralling. To put it simply, the album has legs.

Lerner is a self-professed fanatic of the Far East, though he has never actually been there, as he confesses in “Tokyo”: “Only in my dreams / ’Cos they’re all I know.” The standout track is a triumph of pop songwriting, reworking well-worn melodies and progressions (The Strokes’ “Barely Legal” in particular) with its own endearing brand of meat-and-potatoes power-pop. Making the most out of basic arrangements, Walla and Lerner layer the few overdubs to create just the right amount of punch. The careful mix of brevity and high velocity always spells desire for repeated listens, and “Tokyo” is a textbook example of the craft.

“Rust” starts the album off on a lo-fi note, and its eerily reminiscent of a home-recorded Death Cab demo — softly strummed acoustic guitar, sparse piano recorded a room away, Ben Gibbard-esque vocal stylings and all. Lerner has obviously taken many cues from the Death Cab playbook, but ditches their more atmospheric tendencies for a frenetic locomotion more befitting his youth. And, for the most part, it works.

The album's momentum relies heavily on song sequencing, and the careful crescendo of the first four tracks, reaching a head with the one-two punch of “Tokyo” and “Look to the East,” is enough to keep listeners pleasantly on edge throughout the first half of the album. Fortunately, the first side packs enough firepower to keep the album afloat, its particular strength countering the lackluster songs that round out the disc.

Naturally, the album’s quieter, duller moments are revealed on its second half, after the sugar high of the first has worn off. Here, one of the major hurdles of pop records is revealed: How can a record keep listeners interested throughout? Lerner has no answer. The weaker songs decorating the album’s second side feel half-formed and uninspired. Tracks like “Great Lakes” and “Calling all Doctors” seem hollow; the melodies don’t stick nearly in the same way and are easily throwaways in the face of the radio-ready “Coast of Carolina” and the '50s pop balladry of “Awkward Kisser.”

Luckily, the album ends with the pleasant, albeit anticlimactic “I Saw Lightning.” It highlights Lerner’s folkier tendencies, with just an acoustic guitar accompanying his admittedly thin voice to reveal a nakedness otherwise unexplored on the rest of the album.

Though it’s easy to dismiss pop songs as trite or derivative, it’s damn near impossible to pinpoint what makes them so infectious in the first place. The sound is so much like Death Cab that Chris Walla may as well have written half of these songs himself. Still, there’s no doubt that Michael Lerner brings a quality and a knack for the pop craft all his own. Hopefully, the future finds Lerner’s Telekinesis moniker carving out its own niche in the modern power-pop landscape — but surrounded by such good company, he may never need to.