Something happens when rain falls on downtown streets at night. Clouds mute the streetlights, fog blankets the intersections, store windows become darkened mirrors, and pavements shine with moisture. All of the city’s hard edges dissolve; everything softens and becomes welcoming. Stephen Krieger and Erik Laroi of The Formalist make similarly transportive music. Their sophisticated art-rock and dream pop songs shiver with mystery: they’re intelligent, cultured, philosophically probing, and subtly complex. “A=N,” the latest single from the immersive 2023 album A Trace Of Yourself, leads with its intoxicating qualities. Krieger’s hypnotic beats and synthesizer textures and Laroi’s haunting vocals combine to create something more than the sum of its parts. Together, they make the sort of magic that generates deja vu, reflective feelings, deep rumination, and gently altered states. If the rain on a city pavement could have a musical and textural analog, The Formalist would be it.
Given all of that, it almost goes without saying that “A=N” is about remembering and forgetting, nostalgia and anticipation, what people retrieve from the palaces of the past, and what they let go. It’s a heady composition, but it’s also thoroughly enjoyable, and it’s the centerpiece of an album that doubles as an exploration of consciousness. Like the rest of the songs on A Trace Of Yourself, it’s a gorgeous trip, a meditation, an amble down the alleys of the mind.
The lyric clip for “A=N,” which was directed by Stephen Krieger himself, directs viewers to those rain-washed precincts. It’s after dark in the metropolis, and it’s coming down. Everything is pleasantly blurred, and the electric light that radiates from the streetscape fills the saturated air with a ghostly halo. The imagery could be anywhere in the world where people gather in large numbers; Krieger has kept the whereabouts deliberately obscure to guarantee that fans will catch some wistful feelings about *their* hometown. There are people on these streets, but they’re transient, elusive, melting into the rhythms of city life. Even the text superimposed over the images feels nostalgic — it’s made to resemble neon lights, shining for a brief, glorious moment, and then fading away into the night.
Follow The Formalist
https://www.youtube.com/@wearetheformalist
https://www.facebook.com/wearetheformalist
https://www.instagram.com/wearetheformalist/
