This album is breaking my heart already.  Released on the FatCat label, Lumiére is a piano-based record that not only features the ACME string ensemble (they’ve worked with Grizzly Bear, Nico Muhly and more) but was mixed by Johann Johansson and has Peter Broderick on violin and Adam Wiltzie of Stars of the Lid on guitar.

Dustin O’Halloran started playing piano at the age of 7 and I’m sure by now he’d be able to make a stone man weep by brushing a finger against one key. I don’t know what it is about the piano but the depth of emotion this instrument stirs up consistently floors me. I’ve spent the day in an ebony-and-ivory haze listening to every piano-focused artist I can think of and I’ve even put only piano-based tracks on my show this week.

Listening to this album is like falling in love, falling in love with music, with sound, with emotion and beauty and life. This is why people make music, why they listen to music, why chumps like me scrabble to try and describe something this incredible but fail because writing about music truly is like dancing about architecture.