The Long Lost takes some getting used to. Spearheaded by Alfred Darlington and his wife Laura, the project is an experiment in sleepy rhythms and exploring the range of sad sounds. For fans of Daedelus, Alfred’s better-known musical alias inclined toward electronics and hip-hop influence, The Long Lost presents a quieter trip, destined for shoegaze territory. For fans of more typical independent pop, this band’s music isn’t as immediately engaging. There aren’t any catchy refrains or one-liners that jump out at listeners. Instead, Woebegone is a melodic middle ground, something to sing along with and still feel like you’re caught in a stranger’s drowsy, stream-of-conscious poetry.
The Darlingtons pull from a number of musical styles in small portions for this: live soft jazz drums, electronic patterns, and even finding room for brass elements and the harmonica. It makes sense, considering that The Long Lost is in many ways a project several years in the making. As high-school sweethearts in 1994 turned reunited lovers in 1998, the songs on Woebegone are the fruits of two lovers sharing a lot of history and an affinity for telling stories through darker notes and chords. Led along by Laura’s airy falsetto, the album feels at times cheerful and simultaneously haunting, like a love story with a perpetually ominous edge.
A song like “Sibilance” is a perfect example. It starts in easy, with mostly acoustic instruments and melodies. Electronic textures and strings eventually come in and build up the instrumentation without making it feel cluttered, just enough flourish to make you wonder if the bottom will drop out at any moment and send everything through a blender. Ultimately, though, The Long Lost always refrain.
“Ballroom Dance Club” is the only track that sounds closest to the Daedelus material. Laura’s sweet voice could inspire feelings of a ballroom atmosphere, but the song also gets pushed along by a synth and drum machine. It’s a little more like being dropped in the middle of a Postal Service B-side than a class for learning a standard box square, but it fits in with the Darlington M.O.
At its jazziest, Woebegone is reminiscent of The Cat Empire, and at its most experimental, the album sounds like the wistful poetry of a college sophomore new to GarageBand. Its biggest strength is its ability to take harmonies that almost feel incongruous and make them entrancing, but this also makes it harder to swallow when all this experimentation begins to feel static. While the music changes up, the intonation in Laura’s voice rarely does, sometimes relegating the songs to sweet background music rather than something to give undivided attention. Adding Alfred’s voice in “Siren Song” and “Colours” halfway through the album is almost shocking, simply because a majority of the songs have spent so much time wallowing in the same version of idle melancholy up until then.
The title track is arguably the strongest on the record. Dipping heavily The Long Lost’s folk side, “Woebegone” showcases Alfred and Laura at their most accessible. Flying Lotus has done a couple interesting remixes for the track, but the original provides a fairytale-like jaunt that centers the album as a whole and stands well own its own. It achieves in one song what the rest of the record constantly strives toward, and hopefully future work will see their music pushed in this direction.
