- ALEXANDRA DEEM
- Tomten: No more “jazzy bullshit.”
Tomten’s second album, The Farewell Party, is a soundtrack for the slow-motion pan across a dilapidated banquet table. It’s post feast, and the streamers that streamed are now strewn like downed power lines. Hollow bottles lay on their sides, and the revelers have long since gone. Cake and lipstick are smudged on a jacket crumpled in the corner. Or is it blood? Producer Jason Quever (Beach House, Papercuts) and Tomten singer-songwriter Brian Noyeswatkins have stitched together movements of warm and mournful pop. Analog threads of organ, keys, and Mellotron tie together Noyeswatkins’s tranquilized vocals with accompaniments of strings, brass, woodwinds, and guitar. The Seattle-based trio of Noyeswatkins, bassist Dillon Sturtevant, and drummer Jake Brady spent much of the past year touring the United States. Noyeswatkins spoke from the beach town of Pajaro Dunes, near Santa Cruz.
Describe what you see around you.
I see ice plants, lots of rickety, unfinished wood buildings…
