Photo by OK McCausland

Admittedly, getting into This Is Lorelei has been a difficult task! How can this be? Nate Amos otherwise makes very challenging experimental music as one half of Water From Your Eyes, who put out these pages’ favorite album of 2023 with Everyone’s Crushed, and yet, put this guy in a more traditional frame of songwriting, and the brain has an even harder time processing it somehow. Is it under the influence of the deadpan twee of Magnetic Fields? The power-pop perfectionism of Fountains of Wayne? An indie rock waltz down the street with Elliott Smith? An Aughts reverencing spectacular of pitch-tuned synth-pop? Can it be all of them? It certainly sounds like all of them on “I’m All Fucked Up”, a highlight from the project’s recently released proper debut solo album, Box for Buddy, Box for Star. At least it sounds like the synapses of the brain are working in overload through a manic jangle of instrument and lyric to put it all together at a super fast pace. Yet, it still manages to make the run-on compile cohesively. “You little sick, thing you had your fun / You cut the line, baby, there’s no more tears / You know some people’d wanna go, yeah they’d wanna run away / But you’re all fucked up and you wanna stay here with me,” he sings in its chorus. He knows what he’s done in that moment. The mania makes sense. His other band is all about deconstructing pop in a way that challenges commercial viability while this here reconstructs it in a way that asks, “But what if we made it too viable?” The answer is you can’t. His impulses go all in and make it undeniable. It’s a truly fucked up swerve on getting the formula down pat.

This Is Lorelei’s Box for Buddy, Box for Star is available now on Double Double Whammy.