Review: Minor Kingdom, Don’t Worry Baby
Music doesnt necessarily have to strike you like lightning in order to work its way into your heart. The songs of Minor Kingdom will never inspire anyone to reckless abandon or lead to a mass outbreak of dancing in the streets. And thats okaythat isnt the point. Like Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, and Bon Iver before him, songwriter Kristian Melom is after a more introspective, unhurried and thoughtful kind of beauty. Dont Worry Baby, his second album after 2009s My Back Will Bend, is a carefully crafted set of slow, somber indie-folk ballads shot through with a tinge of mournful alt-country and grounded by Meloms serious, pensive vocalsperhaps too grounded.
This is a record that needs a little time alone in order to win you over, working its mojo in the background during a quiet evening at home, curled up with a book. That intimacy is the albums most charming element, but also its Achilles heel: Dont Worry Baby is so soft-spoken and unprepossessing that its in danger of being overwhelmed like a spiderweb caught in a strong breeze, and the subtle qualities that are the albums strengths are too easily drowned out. And there are plenty of delightful touches throughout Dont Worry Baby, like the wash of shoegaze-y guitar that floats through Sweet Emily, the gossamer acoustic filigree in Crazy Charlie, and the wistful angelic chorus of ooohs on the album-closing Good Luck. But its a fine line between introspective and enervating, and a little more oomph would not have gone amiss here.
Originally published May 12, 2011 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.