Telekinesis

Telekinesis

Effuxion

Merge

***If MICHAEL BENJAMIN LERNER has given us nothing more than an opportunity to nudge the word “effluxion” into the common vernacular, it is still a crowning cultural achievement. But he has given us much more than that. The fifth full-length album he’s recorded as TELEKINESIS is perfect, unfussy power pop—romantic and hopeful and skittish and fresh and familiar, with hooks in all the right places. He called the album Effluxion because he too found the word a little alien when he first heard it in passing, but it also captured the spirit in which the album was made. After Lerner largely traded guitars and drums for moodier synthesizers and drum machines on 2015’s Ad Infinitum—more OMD than GBV—Scottish indie-pop gods Teenage Fanclub invited Lerner on board as a touring member in 2017. In addition to this being genie-lamp wish fulfillment for a devoted acolyte, playing those songs every night with his heroes brought him back to known pleasures. Effluxion is a back-to-basics album—not just in its reaffirmation of the sound and style that made Lerner an indie wunderkind a decade ago at age 22, but in the way it was created. Using the same now-discontinued MacBook microphone he used to record his earliest tracks, he holed up in the basement of his West Seattle home and put the album together piece by piece over the past two years, playing every instrument. While previous albums had former Death Cab For Cutie guitarist CHRIS WALLA—who discovered and championed Telekinesis’ demos—and Spoon’s JIM...

Telekinesis

Effuxion - Limited Edition

Merge

***If MICHAEL BENJAMIN LERNER has given us nothing more than an opportunity to nudge the word “effluxion” into the common vernacular, it is still a crowning cultural achievement. But he has given us much more than that. The fifth full-length album he’s recorded as TELEKINESIS is perfect, unfussy power pop—romantic and hopeful and skittish and fresh and familiar, with hooks in all the right places. He called the album Effluxion because he too found the word a little alien when he first heard it in passing, but it also captured the spirit in which the album was made. After Lerner largely traded guitars and drums for moodier synthesizers and drum machines on 2015’s Ad Infinitum—more OMD than GBV—Scottish indie-pop gods Teenage Fanclub invited Lerner on board as a touring member in 2017. In addition to this being genie-lamp wish fulfillment for a devoted acolyte, playing those songs every night with his heroes brought him back to known pleasures. Effluxion is a back-to-basics album—not just in its reaffirmation of the sound and style that made Lerner an indie wunderkind a decade ago at age 22, but in the way it was created. Using the same now-discontinued MacBook microphone he used to record his earliest tracks, he holed up in the basement of his West Seattle home and put the album together piece by piece over the past two years, playing every instrument. While previous albums had former Death Cab For Cutie guitarist CHRIS WALLA—who discovered and championed Telekinesis’ demos—and Spoon’s JIM...

Telekinesis

Ad Infinitum

Merge

***When it came time to make Ad Infinitum, the fourth TELEKINESIS album, drummer / songwriter / principal architect MICHAEL LERNER found himself in a predicament. In just under five years, he had released three fantastic records—Telekinesis! (2009), 12 Desperate Straight Lines (2011), and Dormarion (2013)—each more ambitious than the last. He had toured all over the world, shared stages with great bands, and enthralled fans of his infectious, ebullient power pop. Newly married and happily ensconced in the home studio he’d assembled in his West Seattle basement, Lerner found himself asking the question that has haunted modestly successful bands down the ages: What do you do after the rock and roll dreams you had when you were 19 have come true? “I went down to the basement,” Lerner recalls, “and started playing the same chords I always play… I just felt like I’d exhausted everything I knew. I was not excited at all. I just could not make another power-pop album.” While many artists have made fruitful use of vintage sounds and production techniques in recent years, Ad Infinitum is a different animal. It feels less like a time capsule and more like a time machine. In the movie version of the story, Lerner would stumble on his way down the stairs, hit his head, and wake up in 1983, and the only way he could get back to the present day would be to make a record using available instruments. Then he’d wake in 2015 to discover he’d been...

Telekinesis

Dormarion

Merge

***TELEKINESIS is both a band and a person. It’s taken MICHAEL BENJAMIN LERNER, now a wizened 26-year-old, four years to come to terms with this and understand what responsibilities it does and does not entail, although one would not, from listening to its/his previous two albums, 2009’s self-titled debut and 2011’s 12 Desperate Straight Lines, detect any hint of confusion or self-doubt, aside from the songs that were directly about confusion or self-doubt. His third album, Dormarion, is the sound of a man figuring out exactly who he is. Also, it’s a total fucking hoot. Lerner wrote the 12 songs that comprise Dormarion in early 2012—half at his home in West Seattle and half at his family’s house in the San Juan Islands—with the original intention of recording the album completely on his own. Instead, he road-tripped over the summer and made the record in two weeks with Spoon drummer JIM ENO in his Austin, TX studio. On Dormarion Lane, to be specific. “It’s a beautiful-sounding word, and if you Google it, nothing but this one tiny street comes up,” says Lerner, although this is obviously about to change. “No origin, no description. I can’t tell you what the word means. It’s like something from Lost.” No Export. (STREET DATE - 4/02/2013)