For each set of eyes

I've never put on a record because I wanted to think about the Siege of Vienna. I never closed my eyes and thought of Kallenberg, the mountain, and I knew the Ottomans were coming. I've never put a record on because I wanted to think about Henry James. Turn the screw. I don't know why anyone puts in a record. I know music often sounds great when you're in love, and that's a good reason to make a record. Also, music often sounds great when you're sad and when you're grieving, and that's a great reason to put on a record. On his second album, For each set of eyesJ. Mamana considers the Siege of Vienna. He also considers sadness. It's a disappointing and beautiful record.

Mamana's music attracts a bookish set. It asks that you already like Mahler and Bartok. It implies that you can subscribe to the literary magazine n+1where you'll find an ad for Mamana's album in the pages of the latest issue. (You may have already read his n+1 report from last year, about Ethiopian composer Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru.) It's hard to be so explicitly referential in music without being snoring. Mamana's 'It's Bastille Day', which is about Bastille Day, features a particularly jarring François Hollande name check that doesn't quite deliver. And For each set of eyes not exactly an easy listen. It requires you to focus and pay attention to how everything swirls together. Somehow, he more or less gets by.

As seen from his latest album, Nothing new in the West, Mamana is comfortable writing excellent high-concept songs, some of which are due to Beethoven. But his work is also very much in conversation with baroque indie pop composers Koenig and Longstreth. Unlike Longstreth, who wrote a sexy pop song goblinsor Koenig, who wrote one for eating falafelMamana is entrenched in the baroque. He writes impenetrable music that is as deeply rooted in Kabbalah as it is about fast food. In “New America,” he puts the Magi and Belshazzar near a Wendy's. It's kind of like a Van Dyke Parks song, ridiculously elaborate, just what you'd want to hear while riding a cartoon horse through Camelot.