The Pop Corporation

Thanks to our brains being thoroughly banjaxed by various algorithms, sometimes you stumble across a corner of the internet and find yourself completely disorientated by what you’ve found. Considering the propensity for mad conspiracy theories and memes that have strayed so far away from the original joke that to understand it, it feels like you have to learn a whole new language on DuoLingo, we can find ourselves gravitating toward comfortable, familiar things.

Be it some generic rock band, or some gloriously lumpen techno – whatever it is, the world makes it increasingly difficult to put difficult things in our eyes and eyes.

And so, to Westerman. New to us, but not new. It’s incredibly difficult to pin down exactly what he’s doing. That’s okay. We’re here to find out more with the new LP, ‘An Inbuilt Fault’. What we do know is that it’s a myriad of things that makes us feel a bit dizzy. It’s kinda jazz-pop. It’s sorta electronic-freeform-folk. It’s not really either of those things. It’s not challenging in a Free Jazz way, but it’s not linear music.

The musician has been described a number of ways, such as ‘spiritually adrift’ and when someone sings “I need a home and this isn’t a job – and why more records when everything is melting?”, you have to think ‘aye, he might just be’. It reminds us a bit of The Notwist, if you’ve heard that LP. It reminds us a little bit of James Blake. It reminds us of Arthur Russell.

High praise, eh?

Thing is, every time you think you’ve got him pinned down, there’s a gentle shift of gear and you’re suddenly thinking ‘is this what Talk Talk would sound like if they were young and making music in 2023?’, because there’s an aching melancholy there for sure, but sometimes, the sophisticated softness is belied by some jarring beat edit and it’s not someone else just pulling pages from the Nick Drake songwriter’s style guide.

It’s rich as hell in places, even if sparse, simultaneously. It’s impressive and immersive stuff and one for the heads.

There’s a genuine frailty and humanity to Westerman’s approach which is such a lovely relief from the usual pack of faux-concerned singer-songwriters. It can be claustrophobic, but it can also be incredibly nourishing to listen to. It’s a super interesting LP, and if this feels like you’re bag, it’ll only get more rewarding the more you listen to it.

We’re not saying that he isn’t singing about his feelings, but what we are saying is that it’s not a simple case of blurting them out unfiltered. When he coos “that matador, survival – ammunition front is all gone now like mother’s love”, you’re certain he’s processing something, but you might have to work a little harder than most work out exactly what that is.

That’s a good thing. Westerman is a bit of a riddle once you scratch the surface, but effectively, he’s made a very cool album with ‘An Inbuilt Fault’.

Fact is, this isn’t an exercise in miserablism, but rather, something sincerely introspective and thoughtful. There’s a lot of bad shit swirling around the world right now, so it’s only right that we have a singer-songwriter trying to unpick it all and deal with it.

When he sings, “I don’t know who I am anymore,” a lesser writer would leave that to hang in the air, but he’s gently adds ‘that’s okay’. Give this album a whirl. It might be exactly what you need in your softer moments.