Away

As longtime Dntel fans know, there are more facets to Jimmy Tamborello's project than the breezy, bittersweet fusion of indie and electro pop on 2001's Life Is Full of Possibilities. Despite that album's enormous influence, he's been admirably willing to tinker with his approach on just about every release, whether eschewing collaborators and processing his voice into digital oblivion on 2014's Human Voice or emphasizing his music's flow on 2018's beatless Hate in My Heart. In 2021, Tamborello issued a pair of albums on Morr Music -- another veteran of the early-2000s indie electronic scene that continued to innovate long after that style was trendy -- that were very different and very Dntel. The Seas Trees See joined rustic folk and retro-futuristic electronics with rambling atmospheres in a way that suggested campfire songs sung by a robot. Away is just as playfully poignant, but Tamborello uses the synth pop that influenced him in the '80s and that he played with Figurine as his jumping-off point. This is synth pop that emphasizes the synthetic: the album's sounds are uncannily pristine, and songs such as "Shell" are shinier and more tightly constructed than much of Dntel's music. Tamborello cleverly contrasts this electronic perfection with feelings that are anything but perfect. He dives into the gaps within a relationship on "Connect," and when he sings "I don't feel like connecting/Maybe I will next time" in pitch-shifted tones, he's still at the vanguard of blurring the boundaries between technology and emotion. Like The Seas Trees See, Tamborello's processed vocals give a different, more intimate cast to the music than the indie stars who graced Dntel's albums in the 2000s and 2010s. Away's ultra-synthetic vocals and instrumentation are often more revealing and heartfelt than the real thing, pushing Tamborello's music closer to the realm of SOPHIE, PC Music, and Garden of Delete-era Oneohtrix Point Never on songs like "No Common." However, the album is still rooted in the hard to define -- but easy to feel -- heartache that has characterized Dntel's music since the beginning. "Hiding" reflects on a literal or figurative quarantine ("Everything I hide from/Could be what saves my life"), while "Bridge" gradually emerges from solitude, but both songs let their vulnerability unfold as gradually as they did on Possibilities' songs. And when the synths and beats take off midway through "From the Window," it's a distant echo of how the Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" captivated listeners nearly two decades prior. As it touches on his '80s inspirations, the 2000s indie electronica that he helped invent, and the work of artists who took that style in different directions, Away shows Dntel's music is still full of possibilities and heart. ~ Heather Phares