Ben and Bruno: "I'm Awakened"

“I’m awakened,” Peter Brant sings on “I’m Awakened”; “I roam the streets entirely free / Never did I walk without a tether around me.” Last year’s 100 Grim Reapers was a fully realized work, completely summoning all the nascent depth within almost Jandekianly (yeah-er) plucked classical strings and soft, pleasing harmonies (without ever bringing to mind the sometimes grating preciousness of, say, Mount Eerie) that the follow-up would have to be a radical departure in order to even equal it. But Brant goes underneath such expectations by not giving up any melodies as instantly unforgettable as the career-defining “New Friend Song,” instead strumming tinnily while showing us the “moon it shines so lovely.” Here is a true new beginning, an awakening from his romantic-surrealist slumber that starts from the ground up in the tangible world.

It’s the engagement with reality that makes “I’m Awakened” such a beguiling song. As Hard History wears on, electronic elements pop up, belatedly giving us the “growth” as expected. But it would sound contrived without the grounding that provided via those trademark reverberations and coos. Walking the tightrope of seriousness without sentimentality and self-consciousness without easy humor, he produces noble, failed songs, a puddle of experimentation and stabs at melody that sound like the afterbirth of Grim Reapers if only in their struggle to escape its influence. But the ruminations on death and love only seem that much more real when taken down from their airy mountaintop.