BELIEVERS – “Piecemeal”

If you plopped Arthur Russell into early 90s Manchester among The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and the like, you might end up with something like Believers. Wesley Powell, the artist behind the name, throws a myriad of influences from house to ambient to krautrock into a pot and boils them down into some version of pop. Languid vocals drift atop layers of tight guitar harmony and synth swells, all undergirded by heavy bass riffs and drum machinery.

Piecemeal, Believers’ third release, is a transitional record that both marks the end of the collaborative era with brother Tyler and welcomes the next with Wesley going it alone, this time with a few more studio toys. On this album he nestles a variety of hefty subjects from materialism and globalization to aging and depression into dense stacks of intertwined rhythm and melody. What comes out is something welcoming and accessible, depicting that particular sense of melancholy that time and disillusionment instill.