Watch: LANZ, ‘125 BPM’

S.Lo on September 19th, 2018

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With a day job and various other side projects that keep him pretty busy, Benjamin Lanz (The National, Beirut, Sufjan Stevens, LNZNDRF) carved a place of his own as LANZ just to get weird. His latest single, “125 BPM,” off his second album “Hoferlanz II” out now via Brassland, is a blissful meditation of yearning electric guitars and resigned shoegazey vocals. Stepping back as a music consumer connoisseur before producing his own work, he says, “As a listener, I admire and enjoy the farthest reaches of experimental and progressive music. But for the last decade or so I’ve made a living playing with some of today’s most canonical indie artists. Yet when putting my own ideas to tape, I find myself writing eccentric alternative rock songs.” The result is a good blend of the two. In “125 BPM” one can hear a bit of Pixies and the Breeders, a bit of his signature sound with the National, a bit of Sebadoh and a bit of that experimental chaos. For “125 BPM,” Lanz leaves a lot of space to swim and explore that other world, singing “This is all I’ll ask for / And this is all I’ll get / Free / To wander / And this is all you’ll ask for / And this is all I’ll give / Free / To wander yet.”

Sauntering through the album, there are beds of hooks to keep one head-bobbing through hypnotic lyrics and poppier numbers where Lanz’s vocal melodies are more front and center. Without obligation to any style or genre, it’s a liberating listen. Call it perhaps, shoe-less shoegaze in thick socks.

||| Watch: “125 BPM”