If the title of his forthcoming album, Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour, perhaps indicates Kramies’ wish to move slightly away from the moniker he earned with his critically acclaimed, self-titled LP, then “Hollywood Signs” suggests that such vibrant dreamscapes are still at the heart of what he does. So, rather than abandoning these rich structures altogether, he instead builds an even more folkloric, lush, and bucolic soundscape, one that is ever richer and yet more accessible, all on the same spot.
“Hollywood Signs” feels like the sonic storytelling of modern mythologies —stories that tap into our own urban sensibilities, our 21st-century feelings and thoughts, contemporary experiences and events, yet transform them into resonant epic sagas and lyrical legends for our own times.
This latest single reminds me of the fine line that bands like Mercury Rev wander between dreamscapes and realities, a balance of music and words that are almost fairytale-like yet always applicable to the here and now. It is a song that exists in the liminal spaces between one genre and the next, between the challenges of the present and nostalgic memories, between reality and dreams, between, perhaps, even worlds.
It’s a glorious taste of what is to come, and what is to come can’t come fast enough!
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