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LP
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FTR 755LP
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"From the sui generis pop Wonsongwriting mind of Ryan Power comes World of Wonder, his first album since 2020's Mind the Neighbors (FTR 519LP). Following a string of influential releases on the Vermont label NNA tapes, World of Wonder is Power's second release on Massachusetts imprint Feeding Tube Records. While its predecessor presented Power in a largely stripped down, acoustic setting with lush horn and string arrangements, World of Wonder has Power return to his characteristic hyper-produced, high-fidelity home studio to craft a set of ten songs which harmonically undulate, consistently surprise, and which all further solidifies him as one of the most engaging songsmiths of our time. Power, 48, describes the lyrical content of this album as reckoning with a 'midlife crisis' -- or maybe more appropriately, myriad crises -- which encompass breakups, regrets, reconciliations, a horrific bike accident, childhood traumas, and personal forgiveness through it all. Despite the remarkable candor with which these morose issues are delivered, Power makes sure to convey them with levity and a surprising amount of humor. Power has always lyrically been an open-book, and World of Wonder is perhaps his most personally revealing statement to date. To that point, he says: 'I love art where at one second it's hysterically funny, but then at the next it's tugging at your heartstrings.' World of Wonder is laden with imminently catchy earworms, and even as they oscillate in mood and approach, Power never once sacrifices his penchant for songcraft and intricate, crystalline structures. The album opens with the infectious masterpiece 'Psychic Mechanic,' whose fitting opening line has Power wondering about 'how many people [he's] disappointed,' within a 'jungle of misguided faith.' Other highlights include the buoyant 'Was That Love,' a reckoning of previous relationships; the highly emotive ballad 'Back Online' where Power croons about how 'everything is a little precarious;' 'Silent Star' where Power mourns the loss of a friendship with the potent 'It's true, I still love you/it's true, we are through,' the meaning of which comes across despite the line being delivered in something of a British accent; 'Dracula Reality' where the singer reflects on being painted as Dracula by his grandfather for Halloween in 1983 but using that as a trojan horse for questions of identity and anxiety of attention on himself. World of Wonder concludes with the exquisite eponymous track where Power begins by asserting that '[he's] amazed by the world around [him]' and that he gets 'lost in the world of wonder' -- within Ryan Power's idiosyncratic pop universe, we listeners likewise get lost and are astounded by his singular accomplishments." --Sam Weinberg, 2024
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LP
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FTR 519LP
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"Music doesn't have to be self-expression, but for Ryan Power that's the only way it can be. Every note, melody, turn of phrase, and point of view in Power's carefully-crafted songs is intravenously infused with his particular way of moving through the world. It's a curious, probing, never-satisfied mode; he's always searching for the perfect combination of chords, the most precise arrangement of words, the most complete capturing of a mood. As one song on his eighth album Mind the Neighbors puts it, his songs are 'dreams on the run' -- part of an exhilarating chase for elusive ideals. That chase leads to some wonderfully weird discoveries. On the wind-blown 'The Slime', sweetened tones inspire surreal visions: 'your feet are burning on thoughts of coal / slowly seeping through the walls of your soul.' Whitetail deer and tectonic shifts get equal footing in the breezy sway-rock of 'Spirit Animal', which takes place during 'pot therapy at brain camp'. And in the deliberate, meditative 'Breathe Deep John', a robot turns into a human but feels like a mirage: 'Everybody wants to see the monster,' Power hums. 'So everyone's out getting wrecked.' Those kinds of inimitable reflections put Power's personality all over the music on Mind the Neighbors. But these tunes are not without precedent: his own obsessions with Brazilian music -- particularly Bossa nova -- as well as jazz (a form in which he's trained) and folk all flutter through his songs, and you can hear some remnants of '60s French pop careening around as well. But Power's been at this for almost 20 years, and any echoes you might hear in Mind the Neighbors are merely intriguing footnotes to the autobiography his music continues to write with precision and, yeah, power. You don't want to miss this chapter." --Marc Masters, 2020
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