Mike Wexler: Dispossession

I hesitate to call what Mike Wexler does dreamy, even if it presents as such. It bears all the marks of something we’d consider “dreamy”. It’s got thick layers, layers with seemingly no limitations, low ends that don’t thump so much as cast a shadow, a voice that is quiet and smudged at the edges. His songs take us into great swaths of space, and in that space there are pieces that feel plainly unknowable. They are mercurial and yet hit at something deep, some idea or emotion down below the surface.

Wexler hits all the dream-like marks, and yet his music trudges around with the heavy boots of this world. Dispossession is an impressive and otherworldly set of dark and dank pop songs, but if there are dream elements to his songs, they never get lost in their own alien miasma, they never bog down in their own confusion. You can always follow the breadcrumbs back to sturdy foundations, foundations that make for strong songs, not merely curious patchworks of sound.

There’s also a natural shift of tones between songs. Unlike so many artists interested in these kind of borderless soundscapes, Wexler doesn’t get stuck in one feel. This isn’t the same theme over and over again; there are variations here that keep Dispossessions fresh. “Pariah”, for instance, is full of ringing guitars and Wexler’s whispery voice, both of which create a kind of sweet claustrophobia early on in the song. As it moves, though, the guitars break from their strumming and carve out clear run-down riffs, creating space and giving the song a murky shape, something narcotic in its overall vibe yet full of clear pieces. The drums ripple along, the bass rumbles, and the guitar even breaks out into a clear solo, and all of a sudden we’re not in some subterranean pop world: we’re dealing with classic rock tropes, and brilliantly.

Wexler isn’t content to just ride that wave, though. Other songs like “Spectrum” explore the proggier side of folk to equally great effect. The quick strum of that song recalls Leonard Cohen and others, while the buzzing atmospherics around the guitar act as a strange sinew between those physical notes and Wexler’s ethereal singing, especially when he shifts into wordless coos after the verse. “The Trace” is a much cleaner folk tune, at least to start, and when Wexler starts the song “You’ve come from further fields,” you can feel the long road travelled. The cascading notes feel like they’re moving forward, bittersweet and exhausted, looking not for a destination but for another turn in the road.

On this record, Wexler finds it in the jazzy shuffle of “Prime” — which shows off just one instance of the excellent piano work on this record — which shows a warmer take on his psychedelic sounds. Where the other songs spread out like cloud cover, “Prime” delivers a catchy and gliding chorus and chiming guitars under that piano, and the effect is closer to Spring thaw than winter dinge. “Glyph” takes us down yet another path, one that starts with the spacious, desert soundtrack of a single acoustic guitar knocking out chunks of notes, before giving way to the piano. The piano rings out its own chords under Wexler’s muddled singing, until you can make out one line: “Open the road to the eye unknown.” After he repeats that request — “Open the road” — the song shifts into something far more stately, the piano and guitar fall in line and work together, rising and falling with movements that may not fit classical structure but deliver all the depth and size of that genre beautifully.

By the time you get to the swampy, nine-minute closer “Liminal”, you have no idea what to expect. The mood of Dispossession may be uniform, but the pieces that make it up are unpredictable, so much so that a curious thing happens by the time you reach the last song — you are surprised by his latest twist, but not surprised that he’s caught you off guard again. Dispossession is an album about travelling in realms unexplored, about finding the new, and Wexler digs his heels into this new soil and heads off in all directions. What makes the album great, though, is that his explorations don’t seem scattershot. Each strange shift in this album seems perfectly tailored, almost inevitable. This album isn’t a dream, nor is it like a dream, but it is a strange world worth getting lost in.