Sharpeless, Brooklyn’s Jack Greenleaf and friends, have released a new album The One I Wanted To Be. The album was born after Greenleaf returned from Japan to find that familiar things seeming foreign. As Greenleaf describes on Bandcamp: “When I came back from Japan, I felt like I had stepped into an alternate timeline. Familiar faces seemed like distant skyscrapers, and I found myself running my hands under cold water to wake myself up. Everything was coming loose and separating. I felt I was doing the same. I felt so far away from home. But I never felt alone. This is for all the people who kept me together – Thank you.”
Musically, the album is a patchwork of influences. The uplifting refrains of Modest Mouse, the energy of Dinosaur Jr., the strangeness of Flaming Lips, autotune, a rap verse (!)… all of these bind together to form an album that is experimental yet undeniably pop music. This is a dynamic album that refuses to settle into one box, accelerating and decelerating at will, changing from boisterous (‘The Hardest Question’, ‘Gemini’ etc.) to poignant (‘Mom and Dad’, ‘Greater Then’, etc) with little warning, and it’s all the better for it. It kind of brings to mind experimental legends The Mae Shi, or rather, The Mae Shi covering Arcade Fire and Cursive and Weezer and Miley Cyrus (trust me) and God knows who else. It is every bit as good as this sounds.
Greenleaf is a close friend of Henry Crawford, AKA Small Wonder (who we featured here), and Crawford appears on the album. In fact, you could say he does more than that: “Jack Greenleaf and Henry Crawford have been writing songs together for as long as anyone can remember,” says The Epoch page, “if you are listening to a Small Wonder song, you are also listening to Sharpless whispering along behind the singing. When you listen to Sharpless, Small Wonder sits nearby, playing along on the floor.“ In a world of blog-driven buzz bands and label-pushed clones, it’s good to know that communities like this still exist. The pair have even put out a small release together, which you can hear here.
You can buy The One I Wanted To Be via Bandcamp, where there are plenty of past releases to explore too. Be sure to keep up with The Epoch, they are involved in some great stuff at the moment.