MUSIC: How To Dress Well – What’s Up

[embed width="640" height="450"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRSkmfwJxHU[/embed]
How To Dress Well is the ambient/R&B/pop brainchild of Chicago’s Tom Krell. Krell rose to Pitchfork-levels of prominence in the early 2010's, releasing haunting stabs of beauty like “Decisions” and “Running Back.” But beginning on 2014’s What Is This Heart?, he began sanding down the lo-fi experimental edges of earlier albums, and dialing in more contemporary EDM influences. Lamentably, the warm, welcoming R&B flavors so prevalent on Love Remains (2010) and Total Loss (2012) got tossed out along with the bathwater.
New album Care (released September 23^rd) finds Krell in straight up radio-ready mode. “What’s Up” is a prime example: a tune that could easily slot into your Spotify playlist right between Kygo and Matoma. Turns out that working with fun.'s Jack Antonoff will do that to a fella.
Far be it from us to begrudge Krell his increasing accessibility. The good news for tunes like “What’s Up” is that they translate better not only to the charts, but to live performance as well. This new batch of songs is more centered around a traditional band than those of HTDW’s early albums, which, in a concert setting, often became an exercise in shadowy synth pad pushing. Yes, as Krell sings on another tune from the new album, “Change is hard.” But it’s good, too.