KRVX

I feel like it’s hard to describe Julian Lynch’s music without using a mess of analogies that a lot of music journalists fall upon when they start a CD review. There’s touches of blissful, contemporary psychedelia that call back to hundreds of influences from music around the world; it harkens to the times of lo-fi produced folk cassettes that reminisce nostalgic memories of youth, and simpler times; it sounds like a more experimental take on Yellow House. We could make comparisons all day long, and while Lynch certainly stands on the shoulders of giants, he has an identifiable sound that, like all music these days, pulls inspiration from different sources. But to me, that isn’t the point of Lynch’s music. In the end, the point lies in how the finished product sounds. A Julian Lynch song has instrumentals that creep and crawl; they wander like lost souls in a dark forest, always on consistent paths that reach a new destination each time. Listening to one of his songs is like observing a work of art that you can get lost in yourself, and it can be interpreted differently with each listen. Lines is a bit livelier than his previous works, and if this is your first listen, it’s not a bad place to start. Maybe the point of a Julian Lynch song is just to take its dwindling acoustics, droning vocals and thundering drums for what they are. At the very least, he always seems to know where to throw in a horn.