Nicholas Krgovich Who Cares?

This is the first release in years from songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Nicholas Krgovich and it is a strange one. When we last checked Krgovich was slinking around the floor to the icy, r&b-inflected sophisti-pop of No Kids, or masterminding the Phil Spector indebted girl group sing-a-longs of GIGI, or manning the keyboards and touring the world with Mount Eerie and Nite Jewel. There's also been the absence of a long finished, four-years-in-the-making magnum opus, a widescreen paean to Los Angeles, written before he was living there in a small house in South Pasadena. There's also the music composed for hair commercials starring Beyoncé's sister. So what do we have here? Who Cares? is a small, short record. Perhaps even a personal one. It's a collection of truly bummed out and lonely-sounding songs, but they're fashioned in such a quiet, composed and lovely way that they paradoxically end up being quite hopeful and tender. Laughter-through-the-tears in album form. Singing in a low, warm tenor and playing a guitar for the first time in ages, Krgovich presents a series of songs that are so spare and direct, they play out less like songs and more like little life events. The end result is a beautifully intimate and clear recording of songs that intertwine Sondheim lyricism, doo wop melodic turns, and barely-there instrumentation which creates its own inviting and idiosyncratic world that leaves much to turn over and explore.