Lewsberg

In Your Hands

12xu

***"Sometimes change comes with big shocks, sometimes it comes with small steps. On In Your Hands, Lewsberg’s new album, a bit of both seems to be happening. Take the second song, ‘The Corner.’ A remarkably discreet song: a violin plays a simple melody; a gentle drum loop keeps its finger on the pulse. 'This brick is a brick to build,” it sounds, though a little later: 'This brick is a brick to throw.' A brick offers many possibilities, for those who want to see it. One time as a part of something bigger to come, the next time just as a simple stone, left on the ground. After all, most things are relative. Sometimes one can achieve more by breaking something than by building something. If you think you can determine which of the two is needed, you’d be fooling yourself. In Your Hands embodies the moment when all the bricks are there, but the wall has yet to be built. It’s a moment with perspective, a moment where everything still seems possible, but caution is advised. The album sounds both smaller and more spacious than the previous albums. Guitar chords are plucked instead of fiercely struck, the bass guitar is given more room for melodic explorations, the drum kit is dismantled to just a tom and a tambourine. There is doubt in the lyrics, but it’s a strong kind of doubt. A doubt that can stand in the way of a wrong decision but also invite for a good...

Lewsberg

In This House

12xu

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  The second album by Rotterdam-based LEWSBERG and their first US release. The quartet’s latest offering seeps into your consciousness in a different way to their debut, though their tendency towards existentialism and black humor is present throughout. Harsher in sound, but more humane in spirit, In This House refuses to let the listener settle for a single moment. The metallic, atonal guitar strum on opening song “Left Turn” leaves no room for discussion. This is Lewsberg at work. The unnerving sound of a revving car, handbrake on, suddenly coming to an abrupt and silent halt. Is the title of this opener a warning for the listener for the rest of the set, as if we’re going down Robert Frost’s “road less traveled,” or is it just a description of this lonesome character’s unexpected behaviour in this particular song? In This House is full of surprises. The teasing guitar break on “From Never to Once.” The two instrumentals “Trained Eye” and “Interlude.” The emotionally affecting ballad, “The Door.” And there’s the pairing of the last two tracks: the fatalistic “Jacob’s Ladder” and the wild, evocative “Standard Procedures”—-as if each piece works independently from the other, gazing back occasionally on what came before and, in turn, adding a different flavour to what comes next. “Cold Light of Day” and “Tbrough the Garden” are textbook Lewsberg; B songs, provocative and enchanting in their minimalism. Whilst “At Lunch” is seemingly innocent and carefree at the start, ultimately conjuring...