The pain of a personal change in dynamics, whether it be the loss of a loved one, the fading out of past friendships or the falling out of a relationship, always leads to a period wherein self-reflection, growth, self-doubt, masquerading, and self-acceptance become synonymous.
In this period, one ends up making a fool, a saint, someone smarter like they saw everything coming, someone succumbing to placebos and coping mechanisms, someone pretending or even actually forgetting that the pain they feel is no longer in their life until reality reminds them; changing and changing until they are fully transformed by the throws of dealing with the fallout of it all. In New Face, Hannes Pröstler better known by his musical project DREAMER DREAMER, the multi-instrumentalist covers this very metamorphosis as he wails through anxieties, finds the appropriate feelings about how things ended up the way they did, processes various emotions of the end of his own relationship like grieving stages until ultimately becoming a changed version of himself.
This nine-track album featuring an admittedly sleek and symphonically attuned production and well-curated sequencing of a powerful blend of space-grunge, shoegaze, and pop-punk with elements of new-wave, ‘90s rock, power-rock and post-rock takes listeners through the throws of it all, as if the toxic relationship plays out and falls out in record time; years of unbridled and complicated emotions encapsulated in 31 minutes of well-performed rock music done by an excellent musician as Pröstler, with the exception of the drums, handles all the instrumentation in this project as well as the overall production of all nine songs; from the delicate and pretty guitar melodies of Lullaby to the thrashing in tracks like Reveal and New Face to the quiet atmospheric effects on and synthwork on songs like Echo and Diving.
The writing also contributes of capturing the instantly nostalgic feel of this album’s themes, as it features many hooks that read more like affirmations, if not attempts at them for the timebeing whether it is the anxiety of “Help me I needed to know / Is this enough / Or should I just go?” going to the self-defeating and yet quietly humorous “Tell me I’m here on my own / It’s funny how /I thought I was more” on Echo to the heartstring-tugging Lullaby with lyrics like “Two worlds apart you would wait for / The pain in your heart to fade / After all you tried” and “Don’t be alarmed, you’ll be safe now / The pain in your heart will fade / After all you tried so hard / You tried”.
There’s also Placebo, aptly titled with lines like “Shame on me for watching you burn / Take your guilt away from me / Far away” as well as Traces with its capturing of self-affirmations changing as we realize life is unfortunately not as easy one would like it to be as “Twisting, turning / We all have a yearning / For something worth living life for” changes over time and all that is left are the traces of such yearning. Lastly, the title track becomes a turn of ambiguous natures and is an interesting ode to finalities with lines like “This is the end of all / When everything’s forever gone / We fall into the sun” and “Life is but a dream / Life is a dream / You can never leave at all / You will never leave at all.”
Truly, this release is one that changes you and if you give this project time, it’s an album that will tug at your heartstrings like distorted guitar riffs until you feel every emotion one can feel.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
