Introducing Ryan Power

Name: Ryan Power
From: Burlington, Vermont
Story: Fearing death, one man quietly battles obscurity
Sound: Complex synth-pop with croony vocals

I Don't Want to Die is the fifth album from Ryan Power, but the first to be properly released. After a career of self-releasing, the set —initially released in 2010, and now expanded and improved upon— was recently pressed up by NNA Tapes, shining a light on a ridiculously talented musician who'd been toiling in something approaching obscurity.

Power is a studio rat based in Burlington, Vermont, and recorded I Don't Want To Die in a barn in Shelburne. There's nothing snowy nor rustic about his music, though. Instead, he plays complex, odd synth-pop that harkens back to old smooth-rock acts like Steely Dan, Aztec Camera, and Prefab Sprout, '90s pop-perfectionist revivalists High Llamas and the Aluminum Group, and conceptualist/stylist/iconoclast figures like Momus and that exponentially-influential Godfather of all '10s home producers, Ariel Pink.

The record's centerpiece is, somewhat naturally, its title-track, a five-and-a-half minute ballad —all chiming synths and sotto voce vocals— in which Power ably articulates the paralyzing powers of a fear of death. "This is one short trip/why don't we enjoy it?" he asks, amidst the study-of-monogamy that is "The Way It's Always Been," and the question lingers.

"We can't deny/we're all going to die," Power croons, in the rhythmically-odd "You Wanna Seltzer," before revisiting the line, again, almost exactly, mid-"The Knowhow." "Hey, everybody/we're all gonna totally die," he wails, in the middle of a manic jam in which a desire to seize-the-day results in existence as a kind of frantic, chaotic grab-bag of terrified experiences. Life is short; far too short to spend with bad music. Power makes sound that, in its goodness, makes listening feel a worthwhile investment of the few precious moments you have before you expire.

• Listen: Ryan Power, "I Don't Want to Die"
• Listen: Ryan Power, "I Don't Care"