“No origin, no description. I can’t tell you what the word means. It’s like something from Lost.” So says Michael Benjamin Lerner, the bearded, bespectacled frontman (actually, he's the only member) of Telekinesis about the mysterious title of his fourth long-player, the puckish yet amiable, Merge-issued Dormarion. Actually, Dormarion is the name of the Austin, Texas street where he and Spoon drummer/producer Jim Eno, who mans the kit on the majority of songs here, spent countless hours putting together near perfect slabs of power pop-infused indie rock like "Power Lines," "Wires," and "Dark to Light," and while the resulting record may not have the power to transcend time and space, it's got loads of charm and a captain who knows how to chart a streamlined course. For the most part, Lerner sticks with the kind of convivial, Weezer-meets GBV power pop offerings that made the band's 2009 eponymous debut and 2011 sophomore outing Twelve Desperate Straight Lines so ripe for road tripping. This time around he's added a few more to the mix, like the blistering "Empathetic People," the decidedly Beatles-esque "Lean on Me," and the aforementioned "Power Lines," while tossing in a few curveballs like the sparse, melancholic sunset ballad "Symphony" and the excellent, moody, electro-tinged "Ghosts and Creatures" for good measure. The latter, at least sonically, opens up an entirely new world for the young singer/songwriter, one that four albums in, Lerner's Telekinesis, which has pretty much driven its current sound as far as it can go, might be wise to revisit in the future.
© James Christopher Monger /TiVo