Just over a month ago, Telekinesis’ Michael Benjmain Lerner bought his first house. Located just southwest of downtown Seattle in the neighborhood of Arbor Heights, where a few minutes’ walk can have you looking out on the waters of Puget Sound, the mid-century dwelling is still getting settled into. High up on his list of priorities at the exact moment is turning a vacant room into his own professional home studio, a place as Lerner calls it, “somewhere to write music that I’m not annoying the neighbors with.”
While Lerner is taking on a bit of the construction himself with some help from his family, finishing the job sooner rather than later isn’t all that likely, as the 26-year-old musician will soon be far more preoccupied touring behind the arrival of his third full-length album, Dormarion, a propulsive power-pop record that demonstrates just how quickly the turnaround between love lost and love found can truly be. Recorded over the course of just two weeks, the new LP takes its name from the street address of Jim Eno’s Public Hi-Fi Studio in Austin, Texas, where the Spoon drummer also served as the album’s producer.
“I first met Jim about four years ago,” says Lerner. “I did a tour with Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s and played the Mohawk. Spoon is one of my favorite bands ever. Kill the Moonlight specifically was a monumental thing for me. I listened to that record a lot when it came out. But Jim came to our show, which was mind-blowing, and afterwards he introduced himself and I was thinking ‘Holy shit this crazy.’ At one point he said, ‘Hey do you want to come check out my recording studio? It’s at my house and we can just hang out.’ Of course all of us were like, ‘Yes, totally.’ I specifically remember driving over there—it was like two in the morning—and we were like, ‘Oh it’s at his house. It’s going to be some home studio like every other home studio you see’—exactly what I’m trying to build—’just this super modest but cozy home studio.’ We get there and he opens the door, and it’s the nicest studio you’ve ever seen in your life. He’s got this super amazing vintage Neve console from Paris or something like that. It was one of those mind-blowing experiences and we just had like a dance party in his studio for a couple of hours, had some beers. It was really fun. After that I was always figuring out some way in my head that we could make a record together.”
As Lerner kept in touch with Eno, even performing percussion for Spoon for a select number of shows, the two eventually convened last summer with material that Lerner had written sporadically in between tours supporting his 2011 sophomore effort, 12 Desperate Straight Lines. As both Lerner and Eno assume the drums as their principal instrument, the recording process resulted in more than a few laughable technical challenges. “It was hilarious,” says Lerner. “Both of us would look at each other and be like, ‘Is the guitar in tune?’ All the time we would just be like ‘Uh, I think we need to tune.’ We both just had no idea, cause I’m totally not a guitar player. I play all the guitar parts on the record, but I don’t know anything about the instrument. I know a lot about the drums, but I don’t know a lot about the guitar, the piano or whatever … there’s most certainly some out-of-tune guitar on the record, but it doesn’t matter because that’s just how we wanted it.”