Boardwalk “I’m to Blame” (Julia Holter remix)

03 May 2014 — Henry Schiller

Percussion is an invasive force on Julia Holter’s remix of  “I’m to Blame”, shifting, squishing, and quashing Boardwalk’s new wave momentum with impunity. Holter’s chain rattling rhythms seems to sit outside the bounds of the actual song, like a skeleton that’s escaped from its body and now seeks to overwhelm it. Synthesizers, chain snaps, and jazzy bass stumble towards one another with sickening, jerking momentum, and couple in an emotive twist of emaciated limbs. Holter has turned Boardwalk’s lush pop storybook into a sinister lullaby whose components creep piece by piece out of a damp Arcadian night and into a melodic step of the loosest iteration.

Amber Quintero’s vocals make only a brief appearance, their waxy softness on the original track twisted through a chilly autumn wind. What is most impressive about Holter’s remix is how little she actually adds to the song. Holter has stripped “I’m to Blame” down to only its vestigial organs and then reassembled the corpus with twigs for bones and cracked, crumbling leaves for skin. The remix of “I’m to Blame” never reneges on the emotive force of the original; rather, it reveals the startled and oh so very human desolation that rests in the core of Boardwalk’s slick grooves.

Anyone who enjoyed Holter’s Tragedy LP or her more experimental earlier releases should find this remix to be a refreshing callback. This is a must listen for fans of the Boardwalk original. Boardwalk paints a wonderful picture of heartbreak, but Holter brings you the in depth interview with its subject.