Pairing members of two of the most celebrated indie bands of the 2000s and 2010s,
Hamilton Leithauser
and
Rostam
's
I Had a Dream That You Were Mine
was a collaboration long in the making. The duo initially met in the late 2000s when
Vampire Weekend
opened for
the Walkmen
, and though
worked on some of
Leithauser
's solo debut,
Black Hours
, it's easy to hear why they opted to share the billing this time around.
brings as much of his aesthetic to these songs as
does, and it's possible to hear bits of
's precise pop and surprising flourishes as well as
's rousing and rollicking sides on each track. Both are well represented by
I Had a Dream
's opening and closing songs, which telegraph their yearning with the twinkling pianos that were a
Walkmen
staple: "A 1000 Times" uses them to welcome new love, while "1959" -- which also features
Angel Deradoorian
's otherworldly vocals -- uses them to evoke an old one. There's an almost surreal quality to the album's arrangements that adds to its feeling of being surrounded, and transported, by dreams and memories: as it moves from banjos to rolling pianos, "Peaceful Morning" sounds like it begins in the countryside and ends in a bar; similarly, the poignant sketch "The Bride's Dad" boasts a melody that could be a hymn or a drinking song and builds to almost comic grandeur. Both
were masters of creative nostalgia, and
take their flair for reimagining classic sounds with postmodern glee to new levels on
. The pair uses hints of
Dylan
The Basement Tapes
,
Harry Nilsson
(in hindsight,
's cover of his album
Pussy Cats
ended up being a pivotal moment in their career), and doo wop in audacious and inspired ways. The "sha-dooby" backing vocals that pepper "Rough Going" could easily sound corny, yet they're as charming here as the ghostly nod to
the Flamingos
' "I Only Have Eyes for You" is on "When the Truth Is...." This juxtaposition of old and new feels much more natural than it did on
, and taps into
's emotive powers fully. There's something moving about how he repeats "I use the same voice I always have" on "Sick as a Dog," a feeling that's echoed on "In a Black Out," a song
originally wrote for
but blossoms on
's more intimate approach. It would be easy to say that
rivals
's past work, but it's better to say that it's the beginning of a great partnership. ~ Heather Phares