Dylan Tauber
He Loves Carmen
(Dylan Tauber)

A heavy bed of keys, then a pulsating tight beat starts “Don’t Tell Me,” the kick-off track to Dylan Tauber’s album He Loves Carmen. We get unintelligible warbles of female vocals (as we will mostly in these tunes) across a slow groove as the song builds and Tauber sails in shaky key strikes. I feel more of a connection (more of the ‘there there’ of a real song) on the second tune and title track, with its droplet like keys and low walking bass.

We get those droplet keys again, but on a much softer “I Love You.” Although he sails in that thrumming speaker-bouncing bass, the repeated “I Love You” and the spacey sadness of the keys sets this apart from the few that came before and sets up a real melancholy soundscape. This is my first favorite on He Loves Carmen.

“All I Want Is You” is a plodding deeper dance number, real sexy and sly. The swift-moving “Light Warrior” is, dare I say it, a commercial mover of a club dance track, while “There Are Angels Everywhere,” employs a stick-snapping percussion and real bleeding high keys….another one of these 14 that maybe overstays its welcome. I am not sure Tauber knows when to get out of his own way on the music he makes, and this would really be my only true criticism about He Loves Carmen.

The slow plod of keys and overdriven chorus of keys work against (in a good way) the  beat on the Enya-like “I Love My Father,” a song that mines a deeply emotional feeling midway through, and it’s probably my favorite track here.