San Fermin - Belong

Pitchfork 58

The basic conceit behind San Fermin, the Brooklyn chamber-pop ensemble led by songwriter and producer Ellis Ludwig-Leone, has an obvious if not unlimited appeal. Like Sufjan Stevens circa Illinois, they bring classical flourishes to indie and folk conventions, bolstered with soaring choruses and spirited performances. This studied approach lost some of its charm on 2015’s bombastically scattershot Jackrabbit—and with over five decades of baroque-pop history, from the Beach Boys to Rostam, they could be drawing from a much deeper well of influences. But San Fermin are still an unusual act. They’re an eight-piece in a music economy long removed from the heyday of huge collectives. And though he guides the group, Ludwig-Leone—who is music director and resident composer for a ballet company, and also had a premiere at the New York City Ballet in 2015—doesn’t sing. Lead vocal duties are rather shared between the capable two-pronged attack of Charlene Kaye and Allen Tate.

Their third album, Belong, benefits from a sharper focus, though San Fermin’s setup continues to distinguish them more than their songs. Belong’s lush instrumental passages are the most consistently pleasant aspect of the record. Where on Jackrabbit those tended to be broken off into minute-long interludes, here the bustling breaks are neatly interwoven into the songs. Along with guitars, synths, and drums, the band has violin, trumpet, and saxophone, and it’s when the full array unfurls, especially on the expansive opus “Palisades/Storm,” that San Fermin sound most engaged. Of course, these ingredients can also bring to mind the most famous rock group with an in-house saxophonist and violinist, the Dave Matthews Band, as on the honking bridge of “Dead,” but on the festival circuit that may be a feature, not a bug.

Ludwig-Leone’s songwriting is billed as more personal this time around, which works in Belong’s favor. The album feels more direct and pop-minded than its predecessors, and the shift is best represented in the catchily surging “No Promises,” which uses cooing vocal loops. The daintily chiming “Bride” is sung from the viewpoint of an anxiety-suffering bride at a wedding who has a dissociative experience. The fluttering opener, straightforwardly titled “Open,” is sung from the perspective of “a ghost at the controls.” The words to these songs can appear cryptic or stilted, and the conflicts that arise in them pale beside the problems found in a spare minute of social-media catch-up, but as emotional entry points, they get the job done.

The downside of Belong’s greater tilt toward pop and feelings is an occasional lurch into treacle. “Bones,” ostensibly a soulful ballad, is too vanilla to really have an impact—less Marvin Gaye than “Marvin Gaye”—and the lyrics, despite references to the physical, have a similarly antiseptic effect. “If I could take you home/Bodies tell the rest of the story/Maybe we’d resolve ourselves,” Kaye and Tate intone in sweet harmony, as if sex were as clinical as a server error. Old-timey son-of-Mumford stomper “Cairo” and the off-puttingly romantic title track (if someone ever sighs to you, “I miss you even when you’re here,” run as soon as you stop gagging) are similar missteps. A more intriguing clunker is ornate finale “Happiness Will Ruin This Place,” a story-song that pulls together some of the album’s lyrical motifs, and includes deft touches such as circus-like oompahs when the narrator visits the zoo, but ultimately seems to signify depth and meaning without quite delivering either.

If I haven’t said much about Kaye and Tate, the two lead singers, that probably makes sense, too. Both give fine performances, both noticeably improved in some ways—Kaye pushing past her typical politesse for a less restrained vocal on “Dead,” Tate edging a tiny bit away from his dead-ringer the National impression for a folksier tinge on “Oceanica.” But, perhaps because of the band’s very construction, neither comes across as the star of the show. For her part, Kaye has been compared to ex-Dirty Projectors singer Amber Coffman so many times you almost root for her own ambitious solo album. (She does have an EP, 2016’s Honey, as Kaye.)

With Belong, Ludwig-Leone has said he wanted “to write music you could smell,” and arguably he succeeds; already, it has been compared to “a wall of flowers blooming at once.” This is an album with a lot going on—“bones,” “bodies,” a “little blonde ghost,” and a homey habit of calling people “honey” recur in a way that hints at a greater significance. But maybe Belong is best enjoyed like a passing fragrance, a scent you vaguely recognize but can’t quite place, a whiff of a particular ’00s Brooklyn varietal of an orchestral-pop tradition that neither began nor likely ended there.