Has there ever been a supergroup whose lineup was less suggestive of how their music actually sounded than Gayngs, the 25-member-plus collaboration uniting players from the Twin Cities, Eau Claire and Raleigh music scenes? Among the players are Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, The Rosebuds’ Ivan Howard and members of bands Solid Gold, Megafaun and Lookbook, but Relayted, the debut album from this project spearheaded by producer Ryan Olson, never touches on the flannel-in-the-forest folk of Bon Iver and Megafaun, the four-on-the-floor dance-rock of Solid Gold, or Lookbook’s lovelorn synth-pop. Each contributor’s credentials are a red herring. Even when Doomtree rappers P.O.S. and Dessa drop by, it’s to sing, not to rap.
Relayted opener “The Gaudy Side of Town” introduces the word that best describes the overarching aesthetic of a record built from some of the most outdated, uncool or downright reviled sonics available: preset drum machines, wanky, soft-blues guitar, quiet-storm keyboards, saxophones seemingly sampled from Showtime after dark, Auto-Tune. Indie artists have been paying homage to Prince for the better part of the last decade, but there’s little precedence for an album this thoroughly immersed in Reagan-era R&B, yacht rock and smooth jazz. Gayngs' feat is composing gorgeous music from this scrapheap.
Relayted is sequenced as a continuous, downtempo mix, with each intoxicating, dreamlike track segueing into the next, introducing gradual shifts in moods as players and voices come and go. There's a narrative flow here. Early tracks introduce a desolate, lonely road. “Who knows how low a man’s soul can go?” P.O.S. moans on “No Sweat.” Tracks later, on the claustrophobic “The Beatdown,” disembodied voices chant “I will die young” with detached resignation. But the spirit lifts in Relayted’s final arc. The ambient “Spanish Platinum” breaks into a fairy-tale verse from Justin Vernonwhose enchanted croon is a highlight on most of the album’s 11 tracksand the album’s peppiest tune, the glitchy “Faded High,” melts together the voices of seven singers following a stirring opening turn from Dessa.
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Of all the claims made in the widely circulated advance press release for Relayted, the boldest was a promise of Vernon taking a stab at “Bone Thug's-style R&B.” It wasn't conjecture. The big moment arrives at the climax of album closer “The Last Prom On Earth,” a hot-buttered ballad in the style of “Tha Crossroads,” when Vernon tag teams a few rapid-fire bars with Ivan Howard, his voice vocoded to T-Pain-levels of viscosity. It sounds ridiculous, almost comical on paper, but it’s not. Relayted may be painted from a template of the tawdry influences, but instead of playing them for shock or irony, it searches for unlikely beauty and emotional truth.
