The vocal arrives close and unguarded, more breath than belt, and Emmit Fenn holds it there for most of Lungs. He is not reaching for the back of the room. He sings like he is admitting something he has not said out loud before, and the mix keeps enough air around him that you lean in to catch it.
Under the vocal the track moves slow, a piano figure over a low pulse, with electronic textures that swell up and then pull back and never crash into a drop. Holding back like that is the entire play. The first time it built toward what I thought would be a big release and then simply held, I understood the withholding was the payoff. It aches more for refusing to resolve.
Fenn has been working this seam for a while, the song-driven end of electronic music where the feeling carries more than the beat does. If you liked the way Blinded carried its melancholy, Lungs lives in the same room, only quieter and more bruised.
This is a late-night record, the one for when the house has finally gone quiet and you are not ready to sleep. It does not want your hands in the air. It wants you still, and it earns that. Some records are built to move a crowd. This one is content to move one person at a time.
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