Over several albums in the past decade, Brooklyn-based outfit San Fermin has scuttled around the gradient between orchestral chamber pop and more mainstream indie rock to varying degrees of success. After their lush, self-titled debut album, the group steered toward unbridled maximalism on Jackrabbit, but 2015’s Belong practiced more control. Double album The Cormorant I & II doubled down on lushness and ornamentation, written in a remote Icelandic village by bandleader and arranger Ellis Ludwig-Leone.
This trend toward deeper corners of the woods makes their straightforward, airy new album Arms all the more surprising. Written in the aftermath of two relationships, one almost as long as the group itself, Ludwig-Leone and longtime collaborator Allen Tate bring forward a compact set of songs that sound like, well, many other songs by many other groups. It’s as if the ivy has been stripped from a Brooklyn brownstone, leaving only the red, everyday brick underneath.
It’s easy to see how San Fermin took on the task of slimming down their sound. Songs largely retain their verse-chorus structures with trademark instrumental sections providing room to breathe and reflect. However, once-pervasive strings have gone nearly extinct, and most bombastic trumpet lines have been tamed into a brassy breeze. Meter changes are out and mellow guitar solos are in.
Opener “Weird Environment” is the most radio-ready single the band has released in years, recalling the simple, sparse, hooky building blocks of 2015’s “No Devil.” The chromatic guitar and bass riff that opens the song holds steady as a foundation, with ghostly synths and routine drums punctuating the high moments. Despite extended water and sea metaphors throughout, perhaps alluding to climate change, Tate’s voice is remarkably normal and counterintuitively dry, to the point where the song’s message borders on inauthentic.
San Fermin’s lyrics have never been their strong suit, often falling into broad cliches despite the band’s distinctive, specific sound. Arms points them in a better direction, most notably on “Didn’t Want You To,” whose playful double meaning in the chorus captures the conflicting flippantness that emerges from a breakup. “I made myself your home / I made yourself your kin / You barely cracked the door / You never wanted in,” sings (other) lead singer Claire Wellin.
Such puns would be hard to come by on earlier albums, and in this there are many things to appreciate about San Fermin’s turn away from the fringes. “My Love is a Loneliness” speaks to this straightforwardness, with Wellin preaching platitudes about life and death over a steady, plain drum beat. It’s Chairlift without a quirky electronic slant; it’s Dirty Projectors without a folksy charm. The tracks are easier to grasp than ever, utilizing bread-and-butter chord progressions and turns of phrase that feel inevitable. The songwriting feels effortless in all senses of the word. Merrily, they play along, easy listening without peaks to climb and valleys to roll into.
This unadorned flatness — this foray into such typical musical territory on love, loss and growth — goes quite well, and the music is danceable, enjoyable and quite nice to listen to. It also begs the question, however, of what San Fermin’s addition to this tradition ought to be. For a group whose biggest selling point is their rare, large ensemble and their dramatic orchestral pop, it seems strange to pull back in this moment, post-breakup, where instead they could be capturing catharsis in meticulous instrumental detail.
One way forward can be found in “Useful Lies,” which gradually builds up delicate instrumentation — piano, strings, plucking acoustic guitar — while Tate and Wellin pick apart the falsehoods of a past relationship. It’s a beautifully patient method of word-painting; the song crescendoes as the truth is discovered, all played with a gentle swing. The song ends with a telling refrain: “While the only thing that happened was time.”
In a way, the lilting and morphing of “Useful Lies” recalls “Methuselah,” off their debut. The track starts off quaintly enough before evolving into a tale of desperation, complete with a heaving final chorus and tumultuous orchestral waves. It’s dramatic and over-the-top, but perhaps in the most necessary way. Tate sings the final line, his voice rising and falling in cycle. “Have you found a place that’s deeper than the corners of your mind / To settle down?” Perhaps San Fermin finally has, for better or worse.
Daily Arts Writer Oscar Nollette-Patulski can be reached at noletteo@umich.edu.