The music on AJ Rosales’s sixth studio album Phasedrift has a timeless quality akin to some of the classic records by the artists and bands that he has listed as influences on his official website or has mentioned in recent interviews. One can hear sonic echoes of R.E.M.’s mid-period work (where the production was more polished and Michael Stipe’s lyrics were more clearly articulated) alongside stylistic nods to Nick Drake’s Pink Moon (his only album without a backing band) and Cat Stevens’ Mona Bone Jakon, noted for its spare arrangements on acoustic guitars and keyboards.
Perhaps this can be chalked up to the fact that Rosales self-produced Phasedrift and is responsible for the majority of what the listener will first notice: he is credited with all vocals, lyrics, acoustic guitar, piano, and percussion and, on the surface, there are very few embellishments and very little in the way of studio trickery on display.
Although the album was recorded at Gravity Studios in AJ’s hometown of Chicago (and its engineer Doug McBride is known for his work with bands rooted in the ‘Windy City’ at a very specific time (the commercial peak of Alternative Rock and Pop Punk in the 90s)), one must consider that Phasedrift was sent to Sterling Sounds in Edgewater, New Jersey, to be mastered by Greg Calbi (his credits include Lou Reed’s Berlin and David Bowie’s Young Americans) and Steve Fallone, who along with Calbi and producer Jack Antonoff, gave Taylor Swift’s 2020 album Evermore a timeless “ambient folk” sound.
Phasedrift opens with “Wait,” which we premiered earlier this year and described as feeling “both fresh and familiar” and lauded for its intricate guitar work and heartfelt lyrics, and the same can be said of the album’s second track, “Thunderclouds.”
“Exile” follows this trajectory with Rosales’s warm, expressive vocals, emotional lyrics, exceptional guitar playing, and just a seasoning of percussion, all carrying equal weight in the mix.
“An Unraveling” is the album’s vocal highlight and finds Rosales in full command of his pitch accuracy, intonation and timbre, while “Leitmotif” best showcases his gifts as a guitarist; his technical skill is never showy and his playing is in service of the song.
“Slow Disarray,” which marks Phasedrift‘s midpoint, is both delicate and intricate, qualities associated with the songs of the aforementioned Nick Drake and often used to describe the work of those who followed in his passing, namely Elliot Smith and Sufjan Stevens.
“Happenstance,” which we described shortly before its release as a single as being both “timeless and refreshingly current,” adds a bit more percussion (and percussive guitar playing) to the mix while “Dinosaur” showcases Rosales as a deft lyricist who is not afraid to compare a global extinction to the death of a relationship: Now that river’s dry for evermore/And we’d be hard-pressed to ignore/Aftereffects that came before/Somehow our destiny was forced.
“Phosphene” is the album’s real outlier, at least from a vocal standpoint, as Rosales does invoke a specific time in musical history when rock and folk artists (Luka Bloom, Suzanne Vega, and Soul Coughing’s Mike Doughty all come to mind) were directly influenced by the vocal cadences in hip-hop, while “Dead Man’s Sea” follows a certain folk template that can be traced back to England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Phasedfrift comes to a close with two particularly strong numbers: “Spinning Around” goes for broke in all departments with Rosales invoking the sound of a full band, while “Anterograde” sounds very much like the work of a single author; a diary page set atop a music stand or on the desk of an upright piano. In both cases, the songs make a lasting impression which is, perhaps, the hallmark of something that is timeless.
