Nils Frahm: "Familiar"

Apparently Nils Frahm was taught piano by a graduate of a graduate of Tschaikovski. That might not seem obvious given his lack of bombast—the 29-year-old German seems more at home in the restaurant than booming from the pit of a concert hall—but when you consider the reception his last three albums got, perhaps he can channel the sad Russian. To maintain the hardship of his idol’s 19th century lifestyle he recorded his last LP, 2009’s The Bells, in a church. For Felt he’s trying something even more outlandish: he’s recorded this one from inside the piano itself, determined to capture the true sound of the strings (or at least see how Daffy Duck felt in the cartoons where Bugs Bunny was conductor).

On “Familiar,” his idea achieves equilibrium, with the spaced-out effect of being trapped in the instrument lighting up the gloomy chords of his composition. Like Harry Nilsson’s “Without You”—the woozy version from Rules of Attraction where the girl from Warpaint cuts her wrists—Frahm tinkles along with a few sorry notes before pulling the release chord on his feelings. Instead of a heavy string section or gasping lyrics, he starts deep-breathing, tapping xylophones and accurately mirroring the sad scene from a watchable romantic comedy. Like a lot of modern classical it’s less a storm of instruments and more a temporary shower of sleet, but in terms of atmosphere, you wouldn’t want anything else to be playing as you sit moodily looking into the middle distance—or slowly suffocating inside the case of a parlor grand.