Style: Singer-songwriter electronica; compare to Josh Garrels, David Crowder Band, Radiohead
Top tracks: “Reanimate,” “Around Every Corner,” “Antonitos Gloria”
Derek Webb leads us on an incisive journey through death or purgatory and back again. Ctrl plays like an existential concept album, questioning “How can you live two lives when both are asking all of you?” (“Pressing on the Bruise”) Electronica undercurrents and sometimes discordant, while choral interludes heighten the uncertain mood of disorientation. Webb’s strength is his refusal to shy away from the tension and ambiguity between real and synthetic, pure and toxic, spiritual and physical—life and death. Unfortunately, while the dreamlike pacing of much of the album mirrors the inter-conscious juxtapositioning, it feels lethargic and repetitive and keeps the project from soaring to the heights of 2009’s Stockholm Syndrome.
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