| Just Once | |
| Type: | EP |
| Artist: | How to Dress Well |
| Cover: | How to Dress Well - Just Once.jpg |
| Released: | July 12, 2011 |
| Studio: | Different Fur Studios (San Francisco, California) |
| Genre: | Chamber |
| Length: | 16:32 |
| Label: | Yours Truly |
| Producer: | Nic Atamaniuk |
Just Once is an extended play by American singer-songwriter Tom Krell, known by his stage name as How to Dress Well. It was released on July 12, 2011, by the label Yours Truly, and is dedicated to Krell's friend Ryan Douglas Hitchon, who died in August 2010. The extended play consists of three string quartet-driven chamber renditions of songs from How to Dress Well's debut album Love Remains (2010), as well as another track, "Suicide Dream 3". Just Once was written by Krell, and recorded and mixed by Nic Atamaniuk. It garnered generally positive reviews from music journalists upon its July 2011 distribution, some of the major praises and criticisms going towards its departure from the reverb-and-distortion-heavy sound of Love Remains for a cleaner sound.
Just Once is dedicated to Krell's friend Ryan Douglas Hitchon, who died in August 2010. Three out of the four tracks on Just Once, "Suicide Dream 1", "Suicide Dream 2" and "Decisions", are string quartet-driven chamber renditions of the more ambient cuts on How to Dress Well's debut studio album Love Remains (2010). These are tracks that Krell thought of as orchestral songs when he made them in the first place.[1] It was when he was creating "Suicide Dream 3" that he conceived making a record in memory of Hitchon that contained orchestral arrangements of the three songs that he envisioned as orchestral pieces.[1]
Krell's vocals are played at a high volume on the mix, and is devoid of any effects except for a little bit of reverb. This is a departure from the digital impulse noise-filled sound that was on Love Remains, where his voice was filtered with a heavy amount of reverb and distortion. Despite the orchestral instruments and a clean sound, some critics noted Just Once to still have a "crude" and "homemade" feel as Love Remains did, as well as maintaining the same harmony arrangement style as the full-length album. One critic from Beats per Minute described the tracks as "delicately arranged" for them to be "aggressively homemade", an example of this fact being a certain point in the EP where Krell pressing a button to stop recording can be heard. The 405 said that Krell's emotional falsetto mixture of joy and sadness "betrays the sense of looking back with a smile."
"Suicide Dream 1" opens with an a cappella part before the strings that build up and what Beats per Minute describes as a "pastoral" piano play. Krell then sings a solo part in the track as the instrumental atmosphere "writhes" as Beats per Minute analyzed. Beginning with a sustained violin, "Suicide Dream 2" then has a "beautiful wash of piano" that "slowly wraps tendrils around the track", wrote Beats per Minute. Halfway into the length of the track, the publication analyzed that "everything sort of drops away to let singular notes peel off into the expanse while Krell's yearning half-lidded whispers waver around the space." "Suicide Dream 3" is the EP's only cut to not be a version of a song on Love Remains, and is the most filled with string riffs out of all of the four tracks. Just Once closes with "Decisions", which Pitchfork Media analysized to be a combination of "fuzzy, abstracted versions of about five different emotions". The track goes into a waltz-time signature every fourth bar. The song is also the only one on the record to have percussion, consisting of claps and a kick drum.
A track released before the EP came out was "Suicide Dream 3", which was issued on June 20, 2011.[2] The song's official video also served as a documentation of the recording of Just Once.[1] Just Once was released for digital download by the label Yours Truly on July 12, 2011. The 10-inch vinyl record was a limited edition of 1,000 copies, and money from sales of the vinyl were donated to mental health website MindFreedom.org.