The Brooklyn-based songwriter is back with the follow-up to his self-titled record.
★★★★½
Photo: Gabe Long
Renny Conti, the Brooklyn-based alt-rocker, has dropped his new album Split Second via Mom+Pop. The album is his fifth record and second in quick succession after last year’s self-titled release.
Split Second follows on from where his previous records left off with lush, considered arrangements, hypnotic hushed vocals and masterfully crafted songs. To say it all feels so carefully put together would be an understatement. Every single note, instrument and melody feels deliberate and carefully placed. It all adds up to an album that really does feel like an entire picture rather than just a collection of songs.
The album opens confidently with the understated but gorgeous title track. It has Conti’s trademark Elliott Smith-style hushed vocals and melodic, intimate acoustic guitars. As is a theme across Split Second, the song explodes into a cacophony of Abbey Road-inspired strings. The intimate music is played with big, expansive arrangements, much the same way as Smith’s own masterpiece XO. It all leads to Split Second feeling like a record you can crawl into and live inside. At times, it feels like you can hear it breathing. It feels alive.
The first handful of tracks are simply electric, with lead single Mona Lisa following the title track. Again, it’s wonderfully produced and arranged; each little musical element, lyric and melody feels so carefully crafted and deliberate. Not a note feels out of place. It’s an excellent example of what Conti is best at: combining musical restraint with arrangements that still feel whole and full of life. Lyrically, it’s melancholic, but Conti refuses to swim in his despair. As he sings that “the years are flying like a bird”, it’s easy to become reflective, and yet the song has a real drive that stops things from becoming too maudlin.
It’s followed by Leaving The Zoo, which is a wonderful, hypnotic, dreamlike waltz that draws you into its golden haze and refuses to let you go. It’s brave to place this longer, slower song right between the album’s two biggest songs, but it’s a decision that pays off. Most artists would place Leaving The Zoo towards the middle or end of an album but, by bringing it up to the front, Conti is able to manage the pace and tempo of the album.
Speaking of pace and tempo, that leads us to the album’s clear highlight, Impossible Truth. It’s full of energy and dripping in hooks. It drives along at will, with the train-like drums powering the song forwards at all times. Conti’s vocals on the verses are racing to keep up with that same relentless yet conversational vocal style that’s perhaps best done by Adrianne Lenker during Big Thief’s more raucous material. As soon as Impossible Truth lands at its massive chorus, everything opens up. Eventually, the song breaks down, and all that’s left is a strummed acoustic guitar as Conti laments that “it’s an impossible truth.”
The album’s middle section, comprised of the trio of San Francisco, 2005, Water’s Edge and Some Smoke, offers an effective bridge from the record’s exciting opening and triumphant ending. They are brooding, personal, melancholic, yet hopeful songs. As ever, Conti is a master at writing personal songs that exist in that perfect space between being too impersonal and not relatable enough.
All The Same kicks off Split Second’s closing hat-trick with some absolutely massive, wailing arena rock-style guitars. It’s the moment all of the album’s restraint boils over into pure, unbridled rock theatrics. It reminds me of My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade as its big, harmonic distorted lead guitars fire into a blistering, thrashing climax.
Desert Cold, with its Sufjan Stevens-inspired delicate vocal, is a blast of casual, clear light after All The Same’s bombast before Longing closes the record out. Its orchestral start feels like a real climax as Conti brings this excellently sequenced collection of songs to a close.
Split Second is Renny Conti firing on all cylinders at his confident, bravest best. It’s the perfect record to listen to as we bring summer into fall with its melancholic yet hopeful mood. Somehow, in the space of just one year, Conti has put together a carefully crafted and whole piece of work. I think it might just be his best yet.
Split Second is out now via Mom+Pop.
