Tomorrows I is the first part of Tomorrows, a concept album by American band Son Lux. The band’s website pitches the project as one that explores “volatile principles: imbalance, disruption, collision, redefinition.” As this quote reveals, Son Lux’s music is not easy to describe in plain English. This description features the same register one might find in the brochure of a modern art exhibit. This attitude may stem from their founder Ryan Lott, who studied music at university and was privately tutored by a former student of Leonard Bernstein.
For the most part, the album lives up to the high expectations these facts might raise. Son Lux makes use of a variety of forward-thinking studio effects, whether it be pitch shifting down the sound of violins to explore the rich textures present in their upper registers, or Lott himself singing in a higher key, and then transposing his voice down to shift the timbre of his voice in an unusual and intriguing way. The percussion is particularly impressive, somehow combining the technical complexity of electronic beats with the raw intensity of a live performance.
Balancing these avant-garde and classically inspired elements are the electronic dance and pop influences of Son Lux’s music. Their music can often be akin to that of Burial, recasting the vocals and beats of dance music in a detached and melancholic manner.
It was this side of Son Lux — its vocals and lyrics — that I found to be the weakest part of this album. For all of their uniqueness and the studio inventiveness behind them, I found Lott’s vocals lacking in expressiveness. Nor are they bolstered by the lyrics, which range from inoffensive to banal. The introductory tracks are especially hindered by this, as they feature Lott’s vocals so extensively. As a guest on the Wandering Wolf podcast, Ryan Lott said, “for me, mixing is as much a part of the creative process as writing melodies […] I’m thinking about the mix way before I’m actually thinking about the words and the melody.” Perhaps it is this lack of priority given to the vocals and lyrics that made these elements seem so unsatisfying to me.
