Out My Window

Koushik's first album was a collection of EPs, and while it worked well as an introduction, it fell short as an album. Not so with the follow-up: 2008's Out My Window is an enveloping hug of blissed-out melodies, gentle beats, hushed vocals, and carefully constructed musical backdrops that casts a spell of peaceful harmony that is difficult to shake. Not that you'd want to. Koushik weaves together a wide range of influences (hip-hop, '60s psychedelia and sunshine pop, early-'70s singer/songwriters, the tripped-out jazz of the late '60s, shoegaze, and trip-hop, to name the main sources) over the course of the album, and often within individual songs, to come up with his sound. It never lapses into simple mimicry or pastiche, though; Koushik is a master at making something new out of all the parts he liberates from the past. He deftly chops, mixes, and blends great clouds of reverbed sound — the chiming guitars, the lightly skittering drums, the warbling flutes and subtle horns — but also doesn't forget to write songs with some hazy, lazy soul at their center. A song like "In a Green Space" is a fine achievement based on sound alone, coming off like a David Axelrod-produced session for the Millennium, but Koushik's quietly insistent vocals give it some emotional punch. There are more examples of well-crafted songs (the insanely joyful "Lying in the Sun" for one) that capture real feelings, but the most impressive aspect of Out My Window is the dreamy, sun-kissed mood the album conjures up from the first note to the final fade. Koushik has a few contemporaries doing something similar (Nobody, Four Tet, Caribou), but apart from Caribou's Andorra, none of them has come up with an album as good overall as Out My Window.