Eric Hurtgen | Rock That Font

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Tender New Signs is the welcome follow-up record to Tamaryn’s 2010 release, The Waves. Using most of the 80’s Creation Records’ roster as a jumping-off point, New Zealand born vocalist Tamaryn and collaborator Rex John Shelverton make the kind of hazy left-of-center pop music that should be on big, expensive radio stations but is not. This is a shame because you should be able to be driving down a big city boulevard and randomly hear songs like “While You’re Sleeping, I’m Dreaming” on your car stereo.

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Lemonade’s Diver is pure summery electronic pop, with enough darkness at its edges to keep from falling into saccharine territory. The cover pares well with the overall vibe — clean and minimal while evoking an unplaceable nostalgia. Recently we talked to the designer Tim Saputo about Gotham, photography and how obsessive listening helps music package design.

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Classically beautiful and hauntingly melancholic, Jacaszek’s Glimmer exists in that thin space between orchestral and ambient. Replete with harpsichord and clarinet, the Eastern European sensibilities of the Baroque period twist around the sounds of bitcrushed digital noise to create a delicate tension that makes the record compelling and beautiful.

The sleeve reflects Jacaszek’s moody atmospherics perfectly. Executed by Michael Cina—founder of the design studio, Cina Associates—the cover features a broken, fragile gold leaf ellipse set against a dark background. Both earthy and sophisticated, the contrast matches the simple elegance of the music. Recently, Rock That Font caught up with Michael Cina to discuss the cover design, naive craftsmanship and the value of not knowing your limits.

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It’s rare these days that an album grips me so completely as Bon Iver’s recent eponymous release. It’s an album in that classical, 60’s-era sense — every song is necessary and complete. Songwriter Justin Vernon has created a unified work that both touches on and transcends folk, soul, rock and chamber music. Maybe it’s Vernon’s work with Kanye West, maybe it’s his preoccupation with Bruce Hornsby, but Bon Iver, Bon Iver aims for the grand statement and wins; all the while managing to maintain that intimate scale that Vernon created on his debut, For Emma.
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Dean Wareham, the frontman for Luna, spent well over a decade perfecting his craft before he recorded the dream pop masterpiece Penthouse. A New-Zealand-born New Yorker, Wareham began his career in earnest with the seminal Galaxie 500, a three-piece that predated and prefigured the shoegaze movement. But Wareham had ambitions beyond their modest, but enviable, success. Luna was his next project and three records in, he and his bandmates hit creative gold with their paean to New York and moody nightlife, though not much gold apparently in the way of record sales. Regardless, it was a critical success and Rolling Stone put it in their top 100 albums of the 90s.
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