Westerman
An Inbuilt Fault
Partisan
May 05, 2023 Web Exclusive
Will Westerman—who releases under his last time—walks a fine line. On the one hand, his work is smooth sophisti-pop reminiscent of Roxy Music’s Avalon. Simultaneously, it’s the kind of music-for-musicians that jazz-heads idolize for its intricacy. His output does both of these things without fully committing to either. It’s never direct enough to be indie pop, but it’s also not jam-y enough to be an instrumentalist’s technical daydream.
That’s what’s made Westerman’s 2020 debut Your Hero Is Not Dead, and now his sophomore album An Inbuilt Fault, fascinating pieces of music. His records thrive in this anxious in-between. An Inbuilt Fault is an uncanny valley. Approachable but unsettling; direct and oblique.
“Give” begins the album with droning strings, a beat that never quite feels in the pocket, and Westerman’s signature linear guitar lines. The song grows from lush to sparse and back again before it drops to a piano outro. This is how Westerman’s songs work: they reshape themselves without calling too much attention to the unexpected, and oftentimes odd, shapes they make.
This tension extends to Westerman’s songwriting, who describes An Inbuilt Fault as “a record of a difficult period of time.” He imbues his lyrics with perplexation for the world around him, his own “inbuilt fault.” It’s not a state-of-the-world pandemic record. It’s about someone who can’t quite parse out why people, including himself, behave the way they do, and his lyrics revolve around this confusion. “I needed help/Help didn’t help at all/I only have myself/Now even that feels so ephemeral,” he pleads over the chorus of “Help Didn’t Help At All.” He sounds more unsure as to why help didn’t work than for his actual need for help.
Westerman wrote the lead single “Idol; RE-run” in response to the January 6th Capitol riots. Sure, the song is political, but it’s more concerned with the motivations behind “the Idol’s” (Trump’s) followers. He doesn’t understand them, and “Idol; RE-run” is born from this anxiety of not understanding. “Take,” the album’s best song, gets to the heart of it: “Every feeling is a wire,” he repeats. Finally, his perplexment turns to himself: “I need a home/And this isn’t a job/And why more records when everything is melting?”
Westerman formed an artistic partnership with Big Thief’s drummer and producer James Krivchenia, who make the album livelier and more spontaneous. Krivchenia’s drums turn Westerman’s careful arrangements into spry jams. “A Lens Turning” and “Take” both spring with a bounce. Westerman moved away from the (also not direct, but slightly more so) pop of his debut, and the album needed this looseness. Krivchenia balances out the high-strung vocals of the title track and pushes “Pilot Was a Dancer” into a definitive closer.
An Inbuilt Fault never unravels its hypertension into something as easy as “Confirmation (SSBD),” which makes it both more interesting and less satisfying listen that its predecessor. But that’s the fine line Westerman works in. An Inbuilt Fault plays with that line, and it’s tightly wound as ever. (www.westerman.world)
Author rating: 7/10
Average reader rating: 7/10
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