After spending a long while playing with the likes of Peter Matthew Bauer (The Walkmen), Lomelda, and Molly Burch, Oakland’s Ryan Von Gonten began working on a solo record of his own. With contributions from Hannah Read (Lomelda) and Andrew Stevens (Hovvdy, Lomelda), Truthlikeness was formed, Von Gonten honing not just a strong album but his own distinct aesthetic, a sound hazy yet paradoxically detailed, a dreamscape of pastel colours.
Written after a move from Texas to California, Truthlikeness is a record about the inherent strangeness of new places, as well as the loneliness of trying to making them your own. “I was really quite lonely at the time but also enthusiastic,” Von Gonten says, “so it was an interesting headspace to be in. I was trying a lot of new things but had few trusted friends for affirmation.” First single ‘Anthem’ explored this directly, the dreamy style conjuring a setting where nothing is as it seems, the vocals vulnerable and earnest as Von Gonten declares “I never go out. I gave it a chance, I never go out,” though never descending into outright melancholy.
Today, we’re delighted to be able to share a second single, ‘Fabrique’. Opening the album, the track follows a similar vein, a kind of waking dream as experienced during low-level fever, where rhythms and phrases repeat and recycle, coalescing into significance beyond the modest sound. Von Gonten’s falsetto is joined by the hypnotic pluck of guitar and sparse synths, and this arrangement seems to gather energy from its own order, eventually rising into a wistful finale where the drums finally kick in.
This is dreaminess not as some stylistic choice or genre trope, but a considered and meaningful expression of a life upended. And life is certainly upended during a change of home. Even aside from any obvious cultural and geographical differences, there is something more personal too, some uncanny sense that even recognisable things are different, that familiarity can no longer be trusted or else has ceased to possess meaning. With Truthlikeness, Ryan Von Gonten brings such a state to life, a heightened awareness of isolation and worry, of agitation and doubt, of the beauty of all things.
Truthlikeness is out on the 14th September via Human Noise Records and you can pre-order it now.