Roommate

Roommate
@ Empty Bottle, Chicago, January 12
by Andrew Clayman
Published in Chicago Innerview, January 2008



Any artist still brandishing a keytar is greeted with a swift assumption of irony these days, but Kent Lambert isn’t fooling around. Initially a one-man blip-pop band based out of Brooklyn, Lambert moved his operations to Chicago in 2004, where his Roommate constituency grew to include guests from about a dozen other reputable bands. The group’s current live lineup includes a violinist, banjo player, bassist, synth-man, and percussionist, but both on stage and particularly in the studio, Lambert—the keytarist extraordinaire-- remains squarely in control.

Roommate’s 2006 release, Songs the Animals Taught Us, offered a nice set of moody, Atari-laden tunes more akin to the work of the Mobius Band than the Postal Service. The follow-up EP New Steam, however, shows signs of a warmer, more organic sound, which may or may not foreshadow what’s to come on the band’s next effort, due in April.