There are hints of The National in San Fermin’s sound, due in large part to the Matt Berninger-esque baritone of singer Allen Tate’s voice. The song opens up nicely from his cold stripped-down opening into a fully arranged piece featuring additional vocals from Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig as well as some horns dropped in for good measure. If this chamber-pop-meets-folk rock song sounds to you like it comes from a classically trained musician, perhaps one with an Ivy League education, that’s because it does.
San Fermin is the doing of recent Yale graduate Ellis Ludwig-Leone, a music composition major who took all of six weeks to write his debut album. Along with “Daedalus (What We Have),” the band has also released the wonderful and noticeably sprightlier “Sonsick” (Summer Jams ’13) and release the full self-titled record today, September 17.