Building from Scratch for the Modern Age

Brian DeRemer didn’t know much about the robbery that Christmas morning when the news first broke.

In a fit of rage, his production partner and friend, Alarmist frontman Eric Lovold, had posted a status about it on Facebook. His recording studio, located in St. Paul, had been broken into. It was Christmas Eve and Lovold, a longtime and well-respected member of the local music community, returned to his apartment to find a trove of TVs, iPods and computers missing. He’d soon find out roughly $25,000 worth of electronic equipment had been stolen from the studio that night.

In the months prior to the break-in, Lovold had been helping DeRemer put the finishing touches on his debut album “Dusty Songs for Children of The Modern Age,” which was, at the time, slated for an April release. While he wasn’t exactly clear on the nature of the robbery, DeRemer had anticipated some losses of his own but had underestimated the extent of it.

“At that point I thought ‘OK they probably took my guitar cases.’ I had some guitar cases and an amplifier, but it turned out they were just looking for electronics,” DeRemer said.

The suspects, who were never found, didn’t leave even the smallest piece of hardware behind, managing to get away with a bundle of external hard drives containing years of recorded material, which included DeRemer’s record. The album had taken seven months to record and DeRemer had already spent more time away from his two young daughters than he was comfortable with. But now he was left with nothing to show for it.

“I was absolutely devastated. It was a lot of work, a lot of time spent away from my family to do it,” DeRemer said. “It was much harder for Eric than it was for me. It was his house … Eric got physically violated. In my case I got something taken away from me that was a passion of mine.”

It took months for DeRemer to recover from the loss, but he insists he’s over it. DeRemer and the other musicians affected managed to bounce back thanks to an outpouring of support from the local music community that coincided with a benefit show at the Varsity Theater last January.

Given the end result, it’s a good thing DeRemer had the wherewithal for a second take.

“Dusty Songs“ might not offer a whole lot in the way of sonic innovation, but it’s 11 tracks of earnest folk-pop that skirts imitation thanks to DeRemer’s craftsmanship, personality and penchant for melody.

The instrumentation is fairly conventional — neatly layered arrangements of what is, for the most part, acoustic guitar and piano. But despite opting for some of these time-honored traditions, DeRemer tosses all kinds of musical curve balls, continually varying volume levels and structure.

For instance, “Small D” starts off as standard pop fare but each chorus is punctuated with buzz-saw distortion ending with a clamor of white noise.

“Dusty Songs For Children of The Modern Age”
 is a thoughtful and earnest debut that sees DeRemer learning to accept new realities — newfound fatherhood in particular — but not feeling entirely ready to abandon the past. DeRemer doesn’t change the dynamics of music with his debut, and he’s obviously not trying to. It’s an album that sounds familiar, but not tired, conventional, but not dull. And to do that takes a certain level of musical acumen that not many artists actually possess.