Michael Patrick Brady

My review of Benoit Pioulard’s Temper ran today in the Boston Phoenix.

If you enjoyed Precis, or are a fan of Kranky Records and their dreamy, folk-ambient stable of artists like Jessica Bailiff or Stars of the Lid, you’ll probably enjoy Temper.

I find it hard to refer to this artist by his stage name, probably because it seems so affected. That’s not a big problem for me, really, but I just feel silly calling Thomas Meluch from Oregon “Benoit Pioulard.”

Meluch’s compositions are, as always, lush and warmly devised, driven by his exquisite acoustic guitar and then drenched in glittering squalls of electronic accents.

At several points on Temper he engages in some brief experiments that are purely post-rock; maybe he should toss out an EP here and there entirely like this, because they’re wonderfully evocative mood pieces that I wouldn’t mind being drawn out past the three-minute mark.