10 minutes with How to Dress Well

What do you get when you combine ’90s R&B with lo-fi production and Elliott Smith-level gloom? The answer is Tom Krell – better known as How to Dress Well, an experimental project that reimagines R&B as a ghostly space for heartbreak and crooned confessionals. As he heads to Tokyo for his first full band set here, Liz Tung talks to Krell about his influences, depression and his double-life as a philosophy student.

Your music is often described as ‘experimental R&B’; could you name some of the artists whose sound has been most influential to your music?
Oh, so much stuff. Hmm… if I had to pick a few: Antony, Kate Bush, The-Dream, Phil Elverum, Jefre Cantu-Ledesme, Ciara, Maxwell.

You got your name from a book you found in a used bookstore in Minneapolis. Did you get any good tips from it?
Ha. No, not really – I don't think I ever looked at the book.

Your music is known for being really intense and melancholy, in the sense that it deals with feelings of loss and depression. When you first started performing, was it difficult to take something so personal and vulnerable and share it with a room full of strangers?
It was challenging, and remains challenging, but that challenge is truly thrilling to me. How to be open in front of others, truly honest and present – this is something I'm really trying to develop for my life, so the performances really help me. [It] helps me develop personally. I love the performance – I love meeting people who are on the same wavelength as me, you know?

You’re also working on your PhD in philosophy. So – who’s your favorite philosopher? What about musical artist? What do you think they’d think of one another?
I mean, first off, I don't have like a philosophical approach to music or a musical approach to philosophy. They overlap in my spirit, or in my heart, but they are very different approaches to the world, you know? My work is largely historical, on German philosophy from 1780-1840 – Kant, nihilism, Jacobi, Schelling. I think that Antony, for instance, and Schelling would have a lot to talk about.

You excel in two fields that aren’t exactly known for making money. Did your parents start running in circles of panic when they realised they had an artist philosopher for a son?
Hahaha. I mean, look: I am doing fine. And professors do OK, if I end up lucky enough to get a job as a professor. In any event, you know my family – my brothers are both janitors. Different people have different priorities in life: my family would never want me to do anything other than exactly what I thought was right.

When you started making music with vocals, how and why did you settle on the falsetto register? Where did that voice come from, and was there ever a question of singing differently?
Never. I mean, I always sang like this – it's where I have the most control and can make sounds that feel beautiful to me.

What’s the greatest compliment you’ve ever received on your music?
Just that it touched someone, helped someone, soothed someone, or moved someone in some fundamental fashion. There's nothing more important than that.

How to Dress Well plays at Shibuya O-Nest on March 13