Patrick Watson: Love Songs for Robots

For his fifth LP, Patrick Watson set out to craft a conceptual suite of “science-fiction R&B meets Vangelis erotica with a zest of folk.” Is Love Songs for Robots that album? Who the hell knows. Deciphering his soulful glossolalia is a tough racket. But like everything else in the Canadian singer-songwriter’s discography, it’s a work of mind-bending aural splendor. Watson and his longtime band approach their widescreen art-rock with cinematic vision. And, at worst, they’re content with exposition and no pay-off: See the lazily loping fuzz-psych of “Grace.” More often, the textures coalesce into a resonant image—from the prog-dub throb of “Bollywood” to the title track’s slow-motion galactic drift. At the center of the sprawl is Watson’s mush-mouth falsetto—an instrument both alien and intimate. “All the places you can go,” he sings toward the album’s end. For Watson, the possibilities feel limitless.