Beginning with an airy and ambient feel, the opening track to Yesterday Is So Far Away by Detroit band Le Ren sets the mood for a deep and unique experience. Somewhat reminiscent of trip hop outfits such as Massive Attack or Portishead, the spectral feel of Le Ren is extremely creepy and real in its content. From the opening line “too much vodka in my blood” of the second track “They Tell Me” it becomes clear that Le Ren has a knack for connecting real life situations and vast landscapes of sound brilliantly.
Picked to play the Hamtramck Blowout, Le Ren is yet another piece to the comprehensive puzzle that is the diverse Detroit local music scene. Within the spectrum of brilliant pop and experimental music that has burst onto the scene, the band combines synthesizer with haunting female vocals to create a powerful and heavily atmospheric sound. With themes of love projected in very real fashion, the shoegazers explain that they are on a mission that can’t be explained-only heard and felt. Quickly diverging from the first two slow tracks of the album, the third track “Sunday Night” offers a more upbeat rhythm backed by the same Siouxie and the Banshees type vocal arrangement. The progression of the album is absolutely brilliant, the ethereal instrumentals perfectly complimented by the peaceful yet unnerving voice of various female vocalists.
With such a strange approach to the theme of love, Le Ren is not your normal preachy, candy, positively charged band. Illustrating the complexity of love via layered arrangements with hurt and hope in the voice results in a brilliant album. What may be the best track on the album, “All You Got” projects the happiness and sadness of their theme perfectly, mesmerizing vocals alongside a beaty and complex background of synthesizers. The pain in Tina Renee’s voice is never better illustrated than when she laments “When you give it all you got, your eyes can truly see”.
Recorded in Los Angeles between 2004 and 2006 and reworked in 2010 in Detroit, Yesterday Is So Far Away is the revised work of an incredible album from a band deserving of its spot in the Blowout. Don’t miss one of the most unique Detroit bands to surface in a long while as they play Skipper’s during the Blowout. The reworking of Yesterday Is So Far Away is absolutely brilliant; something that needs to be heard and felt in order to completely understand.
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