Telekinesis is both a band and a person. It’s taken Michael Benjamin Lerner, now a wizened, grizzled 26-year-old, four years to come to terms with this and understand what responsibilities it does and does not entail, although one would not, from listening to its/his previous two albums, 2009’s self-titled debut and 2011’s 12 Desperate Straight Lines, detect any hint of confusion or self-doubt, aside from the songs that were directly about confusion or self-doubt. His third album, Dormarion, is, then, in ways both practical and profound, the sound of a man figuring out exactly who he is. Also, it’s a total fucking hoot.
Lerner wrote the 12 songs that comprise Dormarion in early 2012—half at his home in West Seattle and half at his family’s house in the San Juan Islands—with the original intention of recording the album completely on his own. Instead, he road-tripped over the summer and made the record in two weeks with Spoon drummer Jim Eno (Heartless Bastards, Strange Boys, Poliça, Black Joe Lewis, Mates of State), with whom he’d talked about working for years. Lerner packed up the van, screwing up his courage the whole drive towards Eno’s vaunted Public Hi-Fi studio in Austin, Texas (Arcade Fire, Spoon, Explosions in the Sky, Roky Erikson, Jet, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Lyle Lovett, Joe Walsh). On Dormarion Lane, to be specific.
So there’s two drummers, and no one else, collaborating shoulder-to-shoulder on a musically adventurous album containing two centerpiece songs on which there are no drums whatsoever. The breakthrough, musically and otherwise, came with the eighth song written for the record, “Ghosts and Creatures,” a keyboard-driven, spacey, and darn near Goth turn that marks a conscious departure from his guitar-bass-drums power-pop racket. “That was the most unlike-me song I’d ever written.”
When you see Telekinesis perform this year (beginning with the tour dates listed below), Lerner will be backed by Erik Walters of The Globes on guitar, Say Hi’s Eric Elbogen on bass, and Rebecca Cole of Wild Flag and The Minders on keyboards.
Telekinesis on tour:
Mar 13-17 Austin, TX SXSW
Apr 21 Portland, OR Doug Fir Lounge
Apr 24 San Francisco, CA Bottom Of The Hill
April 25 Los Angeles, CA The Echo
April 26 Long Beach, CA Alex’s Bar
April 27 San Diego, CA Casbah
April 28 Phoenix, AZ The Crescent Ballroom
April 30 Austin, TX The Parish
May 1 Denton, TX Dan’s Silverleaf
May 3 Birmingham, AL The Bottletree
May 4 Atlanta, GA Drunken Unicorn
May 5 Chapel Hill, NC Local 506
May 6 Washington, DC Black Cat Backstage
May 7 Philadelphia, PA Johnny Brenda’s
May 9 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom
May 10 Allston, MA Brighton Music Hall
May 11 Montreal, QC Il Motore
May 12 Toronto, ON Horseshoe Tavern
May 14 Cleveland Heights, OH Grog Shop
May 15 Chicago, IL Lincoln Hall
May 16 Madison, WI High Noon Saloon
May 17 Minneapolis, MN 7th St. Entry
May 18 Kansas City, MO Riot Room
May 20 Denver, CO Hi Dive
May 21 Salt Lake City, UT Urban Lounge
