KEVIN KRAUTER
Kevin Krauter’s debut LP Toss Up was created in an atmosphere he describes as “useful solitude”. the Indiana native – also a member of Hoops – has been taking time out from working collaboratively as part of a band to concentrate wholeheartedly on his own creative vision – and the results are stunning. Toss Up deviates from the style of wistful, stripped-back folk that Krauter championed throughout his initial EPs Magnolia and Changes into a rich smorgasbord of 60s flower pop, 70s easy listening, 80s new wave, 90s alt radio and 00s indie rock.
This change in pace and broadening of styles was germinated in the basement of Krauter’s family home, where he would spend hours repeating intricate melodies to himself, focusing intensely on the minutiae of each would-be track. “That was my domain for a long time,” he says. “I would hang out at home and smoke some weed and sit at my organ or my piano and play the same thing for three hours or so. It was this meditative experience where I felt kind of crazy, but it was also nice to be totally alone, to get to know myself a little bit in that way.”
Another important driving force behind Krauter’s growth is the use of organ and synthesiser, which permeate the album and which he taught himself to play over the year period in which Toss Up was written. Much of the record came from Krauter “fucking around” at home on his piano and a restless need to “be doing something new”; a refusal to stay in the same place artistically. “the organ I found at Goodwill,” Kevin explains. “It was 20 bucks and I took the tag off and put a $6 tag on from a calculator, because I was like: ‘I don’t know if this thing is going to work’, but then I got it home and I was like: ‘Damn, this is so sick!’ I ended up using it on every song on my album and I play it live, too.”
Thematically, Krauter othen explores love and existential wonder within his music through lyrics which are evocative and whimsical in equal measure; typified in playful lines such as: “Feel like every single day’s such a piece of cake/ I was trying to bring some home”. In uence for this style is drawn from a love of the Clientele and authors Haruki Murakami, formas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut Jr, for the “aloofness” with which they tackle dense subject matter.