Kevin Bronson on February 22nd, 2010

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The first recordings from L.A.’s Gamble House could wear their Grizzly Bear comparisons like a stain, but the architect of the music, Ben Becker, prefers to think of them as a beauty mark. “I can’t say I dislike it, because I have a huge admiration for what Grizzly Bear does,” Becker says. “But …”

Gamble House’s debut (not officially “released,” Becker says, but available here) does possess its own lush beauty. Its meticulous arrangements, sylvan imagery and soaring but oblique narratives straddle the often-unsettling line between wonderstruck and wistful, and it isn’t hard to imagine the meditations that birthed Becker’s bedroom project.

• ||| Download: “Rue Dauphine”

Becker’s music began to take shape in Brooklyn after he spent four years of studying music, philosophy and literature at NYU. He played all the instruments on the initial recordings, which were completed with a full band after he returned to his native Pasadena. (Gamble House is named named for the historic residence there.)

“In a way the music reflects my time there and my time here – and the time coming from there to here,” he says. “It started New York, but after a time I decided I wanted to come home to get a breather from the city. I spent a lot of time alone in my room multi-tracking – I think my family thought I’d gone bonkers because I was in that room all by myself playing all the instruments.”

Despite its claustrophobic upbringing, Gamble House’s album still manages to have an expansive feel, perhaps owing to Becker’s subject matter, which includes paeans to NYC (“Central Park”) and Paris (“Rue Dauphine”) and seemingly stream-of-consciousness digressions. “I don’t like writing lyrics that are transparent to the degree that people will say, ‘Oh, I know what that song means,'” he says.

Becker has faced quite a challenge mounting his one-man project’s live show – for now he’s making do with a rotating cast of musicians that has included Brian McLaughlin, Stella Mozgawa, Keith Karman and Ben Gassorla, among others. His band’s current residency at the Silverlake Lounge has been a bit uneven, though understandably so. “Every week,” he says, “it’s meant teaching new music to people.”

||| Live: Gamble House plays the final installment of its Silverlake Lounge residency tonight.

||| Also: See Becker’s residency diary at Web in Front.