Right now, Mauro Remiddi is probably sitting alone in his Brooklyn flat, watching the tremendous amount of buzz pile up around “Strange Weekend,” his new LP under the moniker Porcelain Raft.
Remiddi has been creating music for a while now, but earlier examples of his work are nothing like the “Strange Weekend” of today. It’s almost like at the start of 2011, he ditched everything he knew about music and started fresh, which was probably one of his better decisions in his career.
Remiddi’s complete perspective on music has transformed as his sound has completely developed from a simplistic guitar-based rhythm to a synthetic programmed style — and it works.
People are noticing this transformation.
Opening stints on recent tours with Yuck, Youth Lagoon and M83 aren’t the worst three gigs in the world, and whether or not “Strange Weekend” receives the same level of critical attention as Remiddi’s accomplished tourmates, it’s probable that this is the last year that Porcelain Raft will be opening for any band.
“Strange Weekend” opens with “Drifting In and Out” which has this steady thrill that creeps in from the corners and weaves in and out of the entire song, accompanied by Remiddi’s fine-tuned vocals.
Everything is so methodological that it seems almost too practiced, but it’s a perfect combination of aesthetics and natural sound, something that artists have sought to perfect for years.
Two new songs that Remiddi debuted at his Daytrotter session, “Shapeless and Gone” and “Backwords,” are also some of the best on the album.
Such tunes amplify Remiddi’s ability to not only create upbeat ,danceable songs, but also to generate intimate, slower-paced music. They seemingly contrast each other in terms of style but still retain the same quality.
Toward the end of his album, the tracks just continue to grow stronger, concluding with a string of slow songs that are sure to be overlooked. The closer of the album, “The Way In,” is one of the effort’s better works.
But ultimately, the album’s lead single, “Put Me To Sleep”, proves to be Remiddi’s strongest effort on the album, whose euphoric ambience, bounded by Remiddi’s simple, nostalgic lyrics, makes an early case for inclusion among the best songs of the year.
Bloggers should be sure to not dub this as “another bedroom pop project.”
This album provides an innovative and interesting take on a stale genre. At its best, “Strange Weekend” proves Remiddi’s ability to synthesize the natural into the unnatural and vice versa.
In his first attempt at an LP, Porcelain Raft exceeded all the expectations derived from his previous recordings and secured his spot among 2012’s best new artists.
