Princeton’s Remembrance of Things to Come [8.2]

Remembrance of Things to Come – Princeton // Buy

With Remembrance of Things To Come, Princeton (@princetonmusic) has put forth their most innovative and ambitious effort to date. By teaming up with the Los Angeles’ New Music Ensemble, the four-piece, LA-based band has found a niche that brings their baroque-pop songs to a whole new, musically intellectual level. The 7-piece New Music Ensemble truly breathes life into the band’s instrumentation, creating a unique blend not found on Princeton’s former releases. Rhythmically varied percussion drives the album, while impressive orchestral arrangements are interspersed with more minimalist compositions, creating what seems to be a post-modernist’s answer to rock music.

As indicated by the title, themes of contradiction pervade the album both musically and lyrically. The opening title-track explodes with a piano/shaker riff reminiscent of bands like Matt & Kim, but quickly develops into a more Sufjan Stevens-esque sequence with the addition of accumulating layers of strings, clarinet, piano etc. The intricate, yet warm and upbeat instrumentation is accompanied by distant, somewhat wafting vocals — drenched in reverb and longing.

The following tracks “Florida” and “Grand Rapids” explore a more programmed, synthesized aspect of the New Music Ensemble with tracks that sounds like a sort of late 80s’ retrospective. The strength of “Florida” lies in the superb vocal performance and the incorporation of strings and bass into Eurythmic-like keyboards, while the dreamy, club-like sounds of “Grand Rapids” are punctuated by some pretty groovy bass lines and a dolefully somber trumpet solo near the end of the track, one of my favorite moments of the album.

Another highlight of Remembrance of Things To Come is “Holding Teeth” — an opus of epic proportions. This one track seems to do a good job of summing up the album as a whole, namely the lack of typical verse/chorus structure and standard rock chord progressions. The percussion driven arrangement begins with a clock-like rhythm that is kept steady throughout, with a brief interlude where an assortment of bells takes over to create a sparse sonic landscape that acts as a respite from the busy, rush of strings, clarinets, flutes, bells, bass etc. The track is even followed by “Phase”, a musical interlude that seems to pay homage to the post-modernist movement.

The latter half of the album is characterized by a more traditional Princeton sound. “Andre”, mixing both the old and the new, is one of my favorite tracks on Remembrance of Things To Come. The foundation of the song is methodical, yet the introduction of strings, xylophone harmonies and piano create one of the most sonically interesting (and contradictory) moments on the record. The listener is roped in while Kivel evocatively sings, “there is a knife… there is a knife slowly sinking.”

The album ends with “Louise”, one of the slower, folkier songs that packs a punch with sheer instrumental power. With acoustic guitar as its base, the track manages to grow and develop into one of the biggest songs on the record, providing a solid end to Princeton’s best album yet.