From Talk My Ear Off’s first minute, the moment the double-tracked guitar menace kicked in, and it was clear that Dylan Bressler had something different to show. Gritty guitar performances and tones, bright, open-faced mixes, and intricate musical ideas on each single one of the album’s 10 songs, all showcasing a truly inventive musician with a distinct sound. Let’s find out more.
Dylan Bressler is a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist hailing from Long Island, and he loves pie. Dylan’s sound is organic. Very few electronic elements are used Throughout Talk My Ear Off. He also champions an approach to his mixing that I could best describe as tightly loose. Allow me to explain. Dylan Bressler’s weapon of choice is the guitar, and it seems that he enjoys playing in a swanky, sloppy way, off-handed, loose with time, and he does so in a calculated way that makes this looseness end up feeling tight and controlled. It is slightly jarring, but in a good way. completely fresh. And how he handles his rhythms to completely complement this approach to guitar is totally entertaining. I mean, just check out the crazed ‘Murder Hornet’ for an apt display of everything I just said.
Bressler is also displaying a range on Talk My Ear Off. With a jangly, pop rock cut like ‘Light Source’ side by side with the aggressive ‘Murder Hornets’, which in its part comes after the acoustic, mystical, and drawn-out ballad ‘Time is a Daffodil’, Dessler’s album is one song after another showing more and more faces to his songwriting character. ‘Time is a Daffodil’ is among the album’s most nuanced and beautiful songs. Lengthy, the song takes its time to expand and shift from a lulling acoustic stunner to a midwestern indie rock anthem with lively, overdriven strums and aggressive vocals.
We have the playful ‘Mars in Retrograde’, with its modal melodies, raspy guitar tones, and driving groove, or ‘I Like Pie’ with its sleazy bass riff, sludging tempo, and its totally unique solo, and its filthy funky outro, the album’s songs are short enough to linger for a moment after they are over. ‘Cassius Clay’ has a plethora of new ideas, making their debut by the start of the album’s last third. A delightfully crispy song, this cut has some of the album’s tightest and most inventive songwriting. From menacing drum rolls, mariachi-inspired horns, swirling, doom-ridden riffs and tortured solos, and an earth-shaking funk section. Easily the album’s most ambitious song, and it is truly impressive that it all works.
The album’s penultimate track ‘In the Trunk of My Car’ is its poppiest one. Blissful, bright, organic, and melodic, an indie pop song of the highest grade. Perfectly suitable for a walk through suburbia at sunset, preferably with hipster friends, skateboards, loose flannel shirts, and beanies. Lyrically light, the songs on the album are approachable, written about things that Bressler cares about or things that affected him in the past, there is a blissful lack of heaviness on this album. Not to say that the album is immature or naïve, but rather the opposite in fact. It is a lighthearted display of musical and lyrical ideas that this creative individual has curated through his years of life. Mundane, in the most wholesome of ways.
Dylan Bressler’s musical boldness is truly inspirational. He has a handful of talents, or rather, a handful of moderately honed crafts. I honestly don’t believe Bressler cares about coming across as a virtuoso on any of the instruments he plays on this album, namely the guitar, bass, and drums. Because when you can write songs as enjoyable, solid, and as creative as Bressler, instruments really become tools that you utilize to bring your ideas to the light. It is the ideas that count, and Bressler’s ideas are uniformly amazing on Talk My Ear Off.
