Label: Run For Cover Records
Released: 17th February 2023
There’s something quite poetic about big-picture thinking coming from a lo-fi bedroom multi-instrumentalist, as if such thoughts would consume everything in their path if allowed to escape their restrictive one-room confines.
This fate faces Runnner, AKA LA-producer and songwriter Noah Weinman. The songs on ‘Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out’ are so beautifully intimate and refined they can barely support the weighty themes that bind them together.
Throughout, ‘Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out’ tackles themes of isolation and frustration, often through a prism of communication (or otherwise lack of). Even the album title – lifted from a line in the closing track ‘A Map For Your Birthday’ – points at this idea, like a hand grasping for hope in the darkness.
Musically, ‘Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out’ is at odds with these themes, remaining resolutely lo-fi in aesthetic. That doesn’t mean it sounds pedestrian, however. For example, the use of a banjo adds definition to the minimal soundscapes, while keys, horns and electronic flourishes fill out the sound perfectly. The resulting sound lies somewhere between Pinegrove’s folkified indie and LVL UP at their most stripped back.
Weinman’s vocals barely ever get above a whispered hush, but even this approach builds the intimate feeling that envelops the record. Occasionally, the restraints loosen – like on the startling ‘Chess With Friends’ and ‘Running In Place At The Edge of The Map’ – but these moments are more like signals in the dark rather than a blanket of washed-out lights. Rob Mair
