DELICATE ART

Walt McClements' independence and its apparently contrary collaborative spirit are at play on Delicate Art, his latest solo release under the Lonesome Leash moniker. Indeed, the balance of such opposing modes is a delicate art, clearly on display from the record's earliest moments. McClements is joined on Driving, by indie-folk godmother Mirah. It plays as a duet about solitude, a conceptually tense but soothing tangle of pulsing drum machine and accordion and synth arpeggiations. The song weaves its way like a car through L.A. traffic, in and out of lines like I can almost see the faces of the people next to me / oh but the light blinds me. But there is something more than the celebration of solitude here: I have never felt as much a part of something larger than myself as when I'm on the highway. Eventually the weaving poetic vehicle hits an open stretch of road and Mirah's voice joins McClements to sing we are a river made of light and made of metal / made of skin and bone. It isn't quite a celebration of collective spirit that animates this statement, but it's far from a lament of the solitary. An apparent tension between solitude and connection is what animates that line and indeed much of the record. But tension is not necessarily strife, and McClements looks repeatedly at that fine and delicate balance between being alone and being in congress. Ghosts in the Garden sees McClements laying with his lover, but with shoes muddied from walking in that park again. And when day breaks, he says, I'll pretend that I got a bit of sleep / It's easier that way. The song is not a simple ode to cruising, but it is an ode to the space between cruising and not. His doubtful lover asks him what did he dream, and McClements replies to him I was naked almost formless and beauty had no context.