Last year we wrote about Latino Ballroom, the debut album from Zach Alva’s Westmoreland. “Written in the aftermath of losing a parent,” we wrote, “the record is one born of grief and the long process of dealing with bereavement,” using the experience as the starting point of a deeper consideration of family and identity. Songs like ‘Botham Jean’ and ‘If It’s Over’ displayed the grace and heart with which Alva approached such themes. “A slow, lush song of patient richness,” as we described the latter, “coloured by the assured certainty of love but a sense of searching too. As though working through the maddening ambiguity of loss in all of its guises, demanding an answer one way or another.”
New double single, Fireplace Lounge / Karaoke Nightmare represents a continuation of Westmoreland’s empathetic style, as well as Alva’s ability to conjure narrative with sparing details. A-side ‘Fireplace Lounge’ is as warm and welcoming as anything on Latino Ballroom, its slow rhythm thick with nostalgic fondness and Alva’s vocals earnest enough to match. But there’s a playfulness beneath the surface too. That kind of crooked humour which runs below the exterior of the closest relationships. The result is both a snapshot of a single night and a wider love condensed.
‘Karaoke Nightmare’ is more of a departure from what came before. Another slow night time song, though this time the rich warmth is distorted slightly to live up to its title. The vulnerability of karaoke is evoked to great effect. The late night loneliness, the unexpected silence, the sashaying croon. The distortion grows worse as the track develops, and with it the sense of something being lost in real time. That unnerving sensation of what was once the present becoming memory. Something no longer lived but instead only thought about. A photograph thumbed until the picture begins to fade.
Fireplace Lounge / Karaoke Nightmare is out now and available from the usual places.