Hometown: South Florida.
The lineup: Malcom Lacey (vocals, music).
The background: Plantation by south Florida teenager Malcom Lacey, who uses the recording alias Arrange, is an album providing at least one answer to the question, "Where next for chillwave?" It uses some of the tones, drones and textures of glo-fi for a suite of songs – some instrumental and others featuring a barely audible moan that we shall for the purposes of this article call "vocals" – that appear to demonstrate what happens when one human being terminates a close personal, and possibly even sexual, relationship with another. See, Plantation is a breakup record. And in this particular regard, it makes Beck's Sea Change sound like U2's Rattle and Hum. For that matter, it makes Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel of Love sound like Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run. It is utterly bereft of hope, although that could just be us, projecting.
That Lacey is a teenager is even more remarkable. He has made a terrifically listenable album, albeit a terminally sombre one, which is a work of such sustained solipsist sorrow you start to worry about his mental health. Give us a good old-fashioned delinquent, degenerate teen any day. It's these quiet ones that scare us.
Of course, the idea that this is a breakup album is largely supposition, dictated by the general mood of Plantation – think REM's Michael Stipe circa Murmur, making a solo album with the Conor Oberst/Bright Eyes of Digital Ash In a Digital Urn – and the odd lyric. Like the few snatches that you can just about make out on the single When'd You Find Me? (perhaps a black joke in itself, the idea that these moments of bleak intimacy might be released for daytime radio play), on which Lacey sings: "Goddamn these thoughts, and goddamn these people that remind me of him ..." We assume he's not getting that deep aching sensation as a result of a departing police chief. Let's face it, few things will make an artist sound this dejected (unless it's Springsteen again). The economic crisis facing much of the globe? Probably not. It'll be love, or the loss/lack of same.
Be warned: Plantation is pretty relentless. Opening track In Old Theaters is piano pop, only really dour, like a suicidal Ben Folds. On Tiny Little Boy the music is so drained of anything resembling light, even the drums seem depressed. On Turnpike, Lacey, croaking now, declares, "I've been burning away", over just enough piano notes to communicate his pain. It's on Tearing Up Old Asphalt you realise it isn't just maudlin self-pity fuelling this record, it's what the late, great music writer Ian MacDonald described as "tragic angst": this is like intruding on someone's private grief. Not for the faint-hearted, but perfect for the heartbroken.
The buzz: "An album of vivid heartbreak – quite possibly one of the most beautifully tragic albums since the Antlers' Hospice" – Fake Plastic Tunes.
The truth: It's like being trapped down a rabbit hole, with a copy of Down a Rabbit Hole.
Most likely to: Shoot out the lights.
Least likely to: Do the hokey-cokey.
What to buy: Plantation has just been self-released.
File next to: Bright Eyes, Antlers, Perfume Genius, Porcelain Raft.
Links: arrange.bandcamp.com/album/plantation.
Tuesday's new band: Wolfette.
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