Something to Lose＜限定盤＞

Polish vocalist/songwriter Adam Byczkowskis work under the Better Person moniker began with 2016s Its Only You EP, a brief collection of smoky, slightly lo-fi synth pop that dripped with late-night loneliness. At that point, Byczkowski was sometimes living in Berlin, sometimes playing guitar in like-minded Montreal crooner Sean Nicholas Savages band, and traveling constantly on international tours. The glassy-eyed sentiments of Its Only You reflected that ungrounded lifestyle, and its songs all held different shades of the same tired, searching energy. Four years later, debut full-length album Something to Lose sheds much of the nocturnal haze of Its Only You, trading the EPs funky synth bass lines and exhausted perspectives for bright, dreamlike atmospheres. Production from MGMTs Ben Goldwasser provides a significant upgrade from the dingy veneer of Better Persons earlier tracks. Like those earlier songs, Something to Lose builds on the influence of 80s synthpop and wistful sophisti-popacts like Sade and the Blue Nile, but the melodies and presentation are more hopeful, more romantic, and more playful. Songs like Hearts on Fire and Close to You are catchy and upbeat, incorporating snaking drum machine programming, layers of fragile synths, and distant, quivering vocals. The bouncy key change and slippery lead guitars of the title track and the unexpected saxophone solo of Hearts on Fire nudge the albums sound a few subtle degrees closer to yacht rock. Some songs are sung entirely in Polish, including ethereal album standout Dotknij Mnie.Byczkowski constructs his tracks so uniformly, however, that these dips into his first language dont shift the emotional flow of the album much. If Better Persons work before this evoked scenes of after-hours clubs and blurry cab rides home after long nights of partying, Something to Lose is more like a thoughtful early-morning walk through empty city streets. The glistening production and yearning performances dont change too much from song to song, but converge into an album-length mood of reflective bittersweetness. ~ Fred Thomas