Welcome to Landlady’s Make Up / Lost Time, where traditional orchestral sounds are as vital as the glitchy synthesizers and long-lost sound-effects seeping in through the cracks in the walls. Flanked by an all-star cast of collaborators—Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner, Big Thief’s Buck Meek—Schatz’s songwriting prowess seems to level up in front of your very ears as the LP progresses in a way that suggests there is no ceiling. Equal parts Vampire Weekend, The Roches, Flaming Lips, and Randy Newman, Schatz knows how to mangle mundane and miserable moments into raw, unforgettable pop hooks. The song “At Odds” declares, “Your money’s no good here / it’s never good anywhere” and, guess what kids, it just so happens to double as a statement on the album itself: big budgets don’t create this kind of musical triumph, only imagination and elbow grease do. In fact, if the LP title can be read as a mission statement, then the listener is bound to conclude these 45 beautiful minutes with a stunned declaration of “mission accomplished.”
