Written by Faye Allego
It’s not unbeknownst that everyone has been stuck amid uncertainty and ultimately seeks comfort in the limerence shoegaze and dream pop emit. Five years of amalgamating ten tracks that challenge the umbrella terms under indie-rock, Lara’s debut album, Disambiguate, intimately transfigures their sonic ability to provide solace amidst uncertainty. A question riddled with intimidation crawls: how intimate can Lara get?
As an introductory instrumental track, “Flight Patterns” defines the essential stylistic sounds of dream pop– it invites the listener to the parameters of psychedelia through its behind-the-pocket drumming, synth work, surging waves of the guitar’s overdrive and modulation, and the mixings in post-production don’t ruin its essence of fuzzy shoegaze. Following the hearty motifs of melancholia in the first track, we are introduced to Jedidiah Tabago’s vocals for the rest of the album. Tabago’s vocals in itself are not bad, perhaps a broader vocal resonance while singing longer notes could help his vocal abilities stand out more. The instrumental tracks of “Ambiguate” are loyal to the artist’s thematic vision of love and loss; “Sonoluminescence” in physics is the emission of light from imploding bubbles. Lara forms cavitations and fulminates an otherworldly auditory panorama, lighting up an entire city in their crystalline song craft and fully understanding the assignment when it comes to instrumental tracks in post-rock albums.
However, the poetic dexterity found in the lyrics all throughout the album is splendid to the ears and further uplifts Lara’s song crafting.
In “Countenance” the lines “Indulgence of each other is our delight / Savor every second if this” use sensory language to illuminate the listener’s auditory experience. The lyrics and its execution hit the brain’s neuron like Cupid and his bow in the way this song elicits lust.
Though the album remains cohesive despite the vouch for experimentality in the spectacles of the Indie Pop/Rock genre, “Peaks” explores the ambiguity of noise haphazardly. Although it is a fairly good track, it isn’t sonically incohesive; the rather unserious approach to the ad lib/sound effects such as “bruh”, “yahoo!”, and Minecraft noises used ruins the flow of the album due to its Aphex Twin-like approach and distance from the limerence the narrator in the earlier and later tracks seems/seem to be going through.
However, the atmospheric endeavors emulated bring justice to the experimental pathway they are in: “Loss” stands out softly. Both versions included in the album exhume a hopeful gesture toward the arbitrary happenings in life but in actuality, it is a story where the narrator follows a path down the “what could have been versus what actually happened” lane. Nearly twelve minutes of both versions combine to answer the question of intimacy these twenty-somethings showcase in their sonic ability, that the passion is ever present and it is engulfed with thought, and purpose, and disambiguates the oneness of life.
Overall, Lara’s debut album is purposive and promising. Their ability to diverge from various sonic fields is frisky yet intimate– although their vocal work could use some improvements to justify their simple yet superb lyric ability.
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