Sublime, stylish, lustrous pop music
Tom Krell's previous repertoire as How to Dress Well is sublime and stylish, but beset with what I like to call Ceremonials Syndrome. Like Florence and the Machine's commanding sophomore album, each individual track is a swirling tour de force, but taken as a whole these albums can be exhausting.
Homogeneity can of course be a forceful artistic decision if applied conscientiously — I refer you to Björk's merciless Homogenic — but more often than not the listener becomes fatigued, and inevitably disengages.
Then along came Jack Antonoff, the producer whose poise and polish shot Taylor Swift's magnum opus 1989 heavenwards. He has taken Krell's strange, tender blend of James Blake's harsh chiaroscuro, Bon Iver's charming minimalism and Eluvium's soothing ambience and burnished it to a sparkle.
Each track on Care glows with its own special colours. How to Dress Well and company have sculpted a diverse, lustrous, pristine work of art.