Belgian Fog :: "Loveless Way"

Of all the allegedly depressing realizations of post-adolescence, the idea that love is distinctly not what you thought or heard holds the potential to be the most titanic. Robert Dale, a guy who builds increasingly bombastic bedroom compositions as Belgian Fog, begins to discuss the architecture of this problem on latest single, "Loveless Way". The argument proves as unequivocal as the opening lyrics, "It's easier to stay with you than search for someone new/ I'd rather let it be than have to find someone right for me." What follows is an exegesis on the power of mediocre partnership; it might as well be called "The Sound of Settling". Dale can't possibly believe all this, or at least that's this writers opinion, and "Loveless Way" stands in the specific hope that the singer's assessment is dead wrong.

Belgian Fog :: "You Drive Me To Madness"

Mix equal parts of the baroque twee of Belle and Sebastian and the bedroomer dreams of Youth Lagoon and you arrive at the glittering and homespun jams of Belgian Fog. On most recent track, "You Drive Me To Madness" singer Robert Dale glides into his falsetto in a chorus that chirps between the same five notes. It's the type of modulation endemic to the best hooks, this one drowned in the soft glow of clipping vocals and tumbling keyboards. Between previous single, "Wait For Help" and "You Drive Me To Madness" it's a wonder that Dale isn't already signed and working on a debut full length effort. The end result of his most recent one-off pulses as a magically real universe - he calls it "another dimension" - of pleasant and fantastical orthogonals, the distance spinning towards and away from the listener in equal measure, a promise of things to come.

Belgian Fog :: "Wait For Help"

A tweaking and breathy take on the bedroom bucolics of Youth Lagoon, Belgian Fog (nee, Robert Dale, a Seattle native) release debut track, "Wait For Help". Intimate in the verses and sprawling in the chorus, the song's ethos lies in the ability to be a tiny little thing and a jumpy and hook-riddled ribbon of tone in alternating moments, a song that could never leave the currently underdeveloped web-presence of Belgian Fog or could populate the rafters at your local mid-size rock venue. The crowd below, still relentlessly hypothetical, would wonder how something so discrete could sound so expansive and wonder-struck at once.