Written by Kelly Liu
Released today through Accidental Popstar Records, About a Year is an irresistible compilation of indie-folk, ambient ear candy, and hefty trip-hop beats. Recorded and produced in his dorm room during Pavol’s first year of college, it’s at once steeped in lineage and committed to sonic experimentation, filled with explicit homages to musicians like Elliott Smith and John Fahey and reverberating vocal layers that evoke multi-exposure images. It marks a departure from his 2019 EP Okay, a more straightforward indie folk collection cocooned in breezy, catchy melodies that belie its poetic lyricism.
About a Year instead couples lyrical insight with daring musicality. It’s composed of beautiful, at times heartrending, soundscapes for us to get lost it. “Franklin Fields” graces us with chilling synths, while “Alex and Rob” finishes with ping-pong electronics. Opening track “Bones” is especially textured. Beginning with simple acoustic guitars, it brims with an untapped energy that finally unleashes through the clash and clatter of its instrumental bridge, a needle-skipping outburst of drums and guitar line. And just as quickly as the cathartic moment begins, it perishes. We’re led to a pause, a quietude. Then, to Pavol’s vocals peering through alongside a high harmony that entrances, where “Nobody came / My words just hang.”
When Pavol opts to sing in a higher register, he does it brilliantly. Moments like that coat the album in a gentle haze, startling in their slow-burn disclosures. In the chorus of “Stay Awake,” for example, his vocal harmony floats above the latter part of the line, “There’s so much to say / that I will never know,” like leaving trails of steam on a glass window pane, laced with a kind of Bright Eyes-inflection. For me, these are some of the most memorable in the record, awash in tenderness, forgivingly self-defeating.
The versatility of Pavol’s sound shines through in other ways. “January,” maybe the most playful track in the album, begins with acoustic pluckings to a buildup in the chorus that falls bathetically back down. Incorporating as well a subtle, vibrating droning noise, it ends on a deeply satisfying softcore chorus-outro.
Beside its sound, the narratives that accompany About a Year are equally captivating. Some, like “Franklin Field” and “January,” paint hazy moments in contemplation, where trees and grass bristle, imbued with poetic significance. Others are more concrete. “Bones,” for instance, is a track that laments the passing of Pavol’s grandfather, William Goldman, while “Words to Say,” a pop-infused standout, is about running into someone after a spat that was left emotionally unresolved, dumbstruck to wordlessness.
And on closing track “Aquilifer,” Pavol explains that, “Aquilifer” is about breaking with established comfort in pursuit of the new. I was taking classics courses freshman year when I came across some references to Roman Aquilifers, soldiers tasked with carrying the Roman imperial standard into battle. To lose one of these standards was considered a huge disgrace. I liked the idea of an Aquilifer who just…didn’t want to do it anymore — someone who wants to abandon this important position in the name of autonomy and relief. It’s a pretty comical idea at its core, but I wanted to present it in a very serious and straightforward way.
The lyrics to “Aquilifer” range from the self-directed musings of “What exactly did you know? What did you know? How did you spend all your time?” to the more assertive “With dense slender verbs / I removed my segment from the arc / With dread down the curb / I condemned that edifice of art.” The Aquilifer’s journey in pursuit of the new, in some ways, perhaps parallels Pavol’s own songwriting, which, while full of references, seeks more expansive and daring territories.
About a Year, it seems, has just such complicated relationships with tradition and autonomy. “The Men Who Taught Me Chords,” perhaps the most formative track on the LP, is about breaking away from musical influences and idols who turn out to be “quite awful people” as a grave, thumping bassline accompany cold-eyed reflections of: “Used to stand up for / men who taught me chords / pale and colorblind.” Tacitly intellectual, often poetic and always sincere, Pavol’s songwriting is deeply intentional, never gratuitous. It’s not glitzy, but nor is it strictly dispiriting. It peels back, frays at the edges, wades elegiacally in thought; and it always takes its time, making its mark, chewing its words. At just twenty years old, Pavol seems well on his way to fashioning a distinct legacy of his own.
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About the author: Kelly Liu is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania studying English. She discovered and fell in love with the local DIY scene after moving to Philadelphia three years ago. She also writes for WQHS Radio and hosts a weekly show on indie music.
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