Infinite Worlds

Vagabon is Laetitia Tamko, who was born in Yaoundé, moved to New York at 13 and taught herself guitar at 17 from the disc that came with a Fender acoustic her parents bought at Costco. She studied engineering at City College and put out Persian Garden, a six-song lo-fi cassette, on Miscreant in 2014. Infinite Worlds, her first album, came out on Father/Daughter on February 24, 2017: eight songs in 28 minutes, made while she still held a full-time engineering job.

She recorded it with Chris Daly, who engineered, mixed and co-produced it at Salvation Recording Co. in New Paltz, New York, from the winter into the spring of 2016. The day job meant weekends only, and on the two-hour trip upstate she read Dana Ward’s chapbook The Crisis of Infinite Worlds, which gave the album its name. Tamko plays the guitars and synths and shares drums with Casey Weissbuch and Elise Okusami, and bass with Eva Lawitts and Dominick Anfiteatro. Her case for session players was arithmetic: a friend could play in 20 minutes a part that would take her two hours.

Three songs return from the EP, rebuilt. “The Embers”, the opener, was “Sharks”. It starts with Tamko feeling small on a bus where everybody is tall and becomes a chant about a small fish and a shark that eats every fish, a song she has said is about resisting “the Type A archetype of beauty, success and superiority.” “Fear & Force”, the first single, has Greta Kline of Frankie Cosmos on backing vocals; NPR noted that the new version pulls back to a sampled bass-and-handclap figure and synth pads, saving the drums and guitar for the last minute. “Cold Apartment” grew out of “Cold Apartment Floors”, which Tamko has called the first song she ever wrote. “Minneapolis” began with a frightening flight to that city and ends in a breakdown of bass and guitar.

“Mal à L’aise” closes side A on purpose. Tamko called it a palate cleanser before side B, and it was her first song in French, her first language, and her first built only from electronic instruments. The title means discomfort. It samples an untitled song by Steve Sobs, a name Eric Littmann records under, on which Tamko had sung, along with Littmann’s voice: the album’s one writing collaboration. On side B, “Cleaning House” has a polyrhythm she later traced to West African guitarists such as Ali Farka Touré, and its key line, “my standing here threatens your standing here too,” is by her account about people who feel threatened by anyone who doesn’t look like them. “Alive and a Well”, the closer, was the hardest to record because it sits at the top of her range and she refused to sing it lower. According to The A.V. Club, the take that ends the album, studio chatter included, was meant as a run-through.

Metacritic’s average is 84 from nine reviews. Pitchfork gave the album 8.5 and Best New Music, praising her voice and guitar playing; The A.V. Club gave it an A and called it “flawless,” and Exclaim! a 9 out of 10. AllMusic and Tiny Mix Tapes were cooler at 3.5 out of 5, and The Austin Chronicle, at 3, said the record wasn’t concerned with musical cohesion. Dusted argued the opposite, that the lyrics hold eight very different songs together. The sharpest split was over “Mal à L’aise”. Pitchfork counted it among the album’s most interesting songs, while Stereogum’s Tom Breihan, naming the record his Album of the Week, called it “probably the worst” and also the clearest sign that this was more than another lo-fi indie rock album. In December Pitchfork ranked it 42nd among the year’s albums and tenth among rock albums.

This is an indie rock record at heart, rooted in the Brooklyn DIY scene that took Tamko in, and the detours are what make it hers. What holds them together is a subject, not a sound: room. A seat on a bus, a house she won’t leave, a cold apartment, a city she can’t go back to, a well that may stop producing. Eight songs, 28 minutes and an electronic piece placed exactly where she wanted it add up to a producer’s sequencing on a first album. “Mal à L’aise” is easier to defend as a hinge, which is how she designed it, than as a song. The record ends on voices in the control room, reacting to what Tamko thought was a run-through.