![]() ![]() ![]() On “Call Me Up” and “ Every Single Thing,” Sagar adds unforgettably sugary synth riffs that are equally danceable and mopey. In the background, a faltering metronome chimes in, giving the song an even more broken down feel. In the album’s title track, he pairs together white noise and funky guitars into an inexplicable but personable ballad of loneliness and stress. ![]() But he’s also capable of laying down the cheese too thick. And here, the pure sleaziness he is able to extract from his instruments can be gloriously campy, or unexpectedly elegant and morose. The architecture of his sound has always held some of the funniest parts of the ’80s at its core. ![]() He’s incorporated the off-kilter guitar playing of his earlier work into his new sound, cleaved from cheap synthesizers and drum machines, and the result could be described as thrift store synthpop, or as it might have been called eight years ago: chillwave. On his third album, Fresh Air, Sagar incorporates new tropes, including AM-radio yacht rock and quiet storm R&B, into his practice. And of all the musicians spawned from DeMarco’s smokey den ( Alex Calder and Walter TV among them), Sagar always seemed poised to be the one to breakout. Both Sagar and DeMarco sell versions of the world that you want to inhabit: devil may care, but anxiously millennial. Overall, on those two records, Sagar’s spin on slacker rock was easy listening, malleable and affecting in the way DeMarco’s rock was anthemic. ![]()
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