Are you ready for Neil Dexter?

I’ll Be Ready is an ambitious collection of ten tracks from Irish musician Neil Dexter. The album’s opener, titled “Robert Wyatt,” takes a trip through every record store in the ‘80s. In its four minute duration, it spans from The Cure to Duran Duran and everything in between; at times, it feels like you’re listening to more than one song, which Dexter describes as a “Frankenstein composition comprised of three different ideas saved in one project file,” so it makes sense that some of its contents create a collage of rich, multiple synth productions and parts that are bound to shift as soon as you start tapping your foot.

However, when arriving at “Loving You,” the listener is greeted with a much more cohesive composition. It has a nice groove, sweet transitions, and a strong vocal that modulates in tasteful ways. The title track, “I’ll Be Ready,” contains the most raw of vocal lines on the entire record, with Dexter momentarily abandoning all vocal processing for a dry, in-your-face: “This time, I’ll be ready.” If you’ve been reading any of my previous reviews, you may have noticed that I am a big fan of Bon Iver and, while I much prefer their raw, earlier work, Dexter’s record has moments where it appears to reach into Justin Vernon’s bag of vocal tricks, before receding back into the vast ocean of synth-pop.

The album is set to be released on October 14, but you can hear the title track right now:

-TM