Moment Again Elsewhere

For his second album for the Anticipate label, Morgan Packard further explores the combination of piano, electronics, and other instruments on Moment Again Elsewhere, resulting in a quietly entrancing listen. As much indebted to the shadowy beauty of bands like Bark Psychosis and late Talk Talk as to the stripped-down electronic melancholia of Schneider TM (especially noticeable on songs like "Unveil" and "Moment"), the album feels at points like a slight leap over a decade's time from the turn of the millennium. The almost jazz-tinged flow of "Explain" is especially involving on this front, with the piano coming to the fore. It has its own distinct pleasures, though, as when Packard breaks out the accordion songs like "Allow," adding a suddenly even older feeling to the arrangement, a tinge of a receding past. Quicker songs like "Although" sometimes keep the beats deeper in the mix, letting the main melody act almost as if it's floating in suspension while everything else swirls around it, a disorienting but entrancing effect.