Here We Go Magic

Having already slipped two albums and two EPs under the radar using his own name, Luke Temple appears to have struck a chord with his new project, Here We Go Magic. Dropping the singer-songwriter guise has done the trick, and though Temple's music was always a lot more urbane and multi-dimensional than your average coffee house loiterer with an acoustic, with Here We Go Magic, he's transformed himself into an unpredictable and stimulating force with this experiment, which uses his stream-of-consciousness for inspiration. Beginning with the polyrhythmic paradise of "Only Pieces," which mixes Simon and Garfunkel's harmonies with Byrne and Eno's measured funk, Temple twists his harmonic folk into all sorts of vibrant configurations with the first four cuts. And then without notice, he drops "Ghost List," a wash of post-shoegaze ambient that completely rattles the album's foundation. "I Just Want To See You Underwater" gets back to normal and tries to dust itself off but then he falls back into cavernous drones that are made even more uneven when he finishes with the waltzy piano pop of the rather miserable "Everything's Big." Despite a lack of clarity, Temple uses dexterity and rampant ambition to implement his songs, which are all striking in their own respects.