Pitchfork

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson is one man, but his debut album is so full of voices and sounds it suggests the work of a community. Sometimes this fullness is just an illusion of multitracking and overdubbing, but often it's a document of something truly shared, thanks to contributions from TV on the Radio's Kyp Malone and various members of Grizzly Bear (the record was produced by GB's Chris Taylor). Nonetheless, it's still a solo album, which helps drive home the message these ragged singalongs seem to be suggesting-- that these people (and perhaps we too, by extension) are, in fact, lonely together. Much like Conor Oberst, Robinson may be surrounded by friends and their democratic noises, but his burdens are all his own.
 
The bands and artists already mentioned help provide some of Robinson's sonic signposts as well. The art-soul bleat of TVOTR is there, though MBAR steers more towards Dylan/Band loose-ended ramble than Bowie-styled museum pieces, putting him more in line with Oberst, Phosphorescent, and even the Arcade Fire (check the ecstatic wobbling of "My Good Luck"). Robinson also isn't afraid to spray some sprawling, dissonant electric fretwork atop his compositions, particularly on "The Ongoing Debate Concerning Present vs. Future" and "Woodfriend", the latter lamentably deducted points for using the same melody as that one hit song Harvey Danger had. Probably the record's greatest fault is that Robinson abandons jaunty volume almost altogether as the album crawls to a close, and hence the final few tracks tend to bleed into one sluggish junkie hymn.
 
From a lyrical standpoint pretty much the entire album is in that vein (no pun intended), Robinson conjuring images of disheveled dreams, substance crutches, and urban hipster ennui regardless of whether he's accompanied by the amiably loping country grooves of "Who's Laughing?" or the slow mournful chords of "Above the Sun". Given his perpetual state of weariness, Robinson deserves credit for managing to be open-ended and allusive without slipping wholly into ephemerality, spotting his addled pleas for solace, faith and mental health with druggie bio details like "tried to kick on Tuesday," "I don't each much, mainly skin" and "got a bit screwed off this shit that we scored/ Ripped off this kid's parents and had to buy a bit more."
 
Robinson's choir of the damned reaches its fever pitch on "Written Over", a desperate plea for redemption and second chances that gathers a host of rawly unfulfilled voices to shout its titular refrain. Yet the stark, solitary verses are infinitely more telling-- mumbling, quavering and half-choking on his words at times, it's Robinson alone who finds himself with "my face in the dirt/ My ass in the sky."