“neo-classical… draws on a wide range of styles and genres to create a surreal, cinematic slice of orchestral pop”

Now the album has been released and I’m glad to say it follows this same blueprint. Opener ‘Big Fish And The Sirens’ is a perfect example of this. The first thirty seconds unfold as a luscious, intricate instrumental before Weber’s vocals arrive and transform the track into a pop song. But just as his vocals take centre-stage and you think you have it pegged, the music responds accordingly, swelling once more so that Weber’s voice is reduced to just another element of a brilliant whole. The song barely reaches the 2:20 mark, yet by the time the music recedes to leave sirens traversing the silence, you feel in the aftermath of something important and on the verge of a larger burst of activity.

As we mentioned in other REW<< and Eric & Magill posts, Weber draws inspiration from across the globe, utilising an array of distinctive sounds side by side to create something akin to the multicultural world in which we live. ‘To Come Unglued’ opens with air-raid siren synths which morph quickly into an Eastern jaunt before the drums and vocals of Western pop kick in. The title track is similarly diverse, a collision of Bollywood and Hollywood scores with the slow, atmospheric percussion of a post-rock anthem. ‘The Lights in the Sands of Katumpkale’ is the soundtrack to a different cinematic world entirely, one where unknown Europeans committed weird to tape, while ‘Cupid’s Empty House’ is a grand dream-pop song, and ‘Swan’s Melody’ is piano-led and melancholic, full of lingering moments and gravid empty spaces.

If this variety sounds jarring then that’s because it is. Weber does not knit all the elements into a seamless whole but rather plays with order and explores the joins, in doing so creating music which addresses our fragmented, postmodern existence. His biggest achievement is managing to assemble the pieces into something listenable for all of it’s idiosyncrasies, with the pop elements acting as a string to follow into the unfamiliar territories beyond.

Olive Skinned, Silver Tongued Sirens Sing Swan Songs is out now on Hidden Shoal. You can buy it from Bandcamp.

The post REW<< - Olive Skinned, Silver Tongued Sirens Sing Swan Songs appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Grow/Decompose… shares [David Foster] Wallace’s metamodern style – a postmodern web of motifs and strange humour countered with a modernist sincerity and genuine sense of hope …if played on repeat Grow / Decompose never ends, a musical ouroboros of well-worn paths that are both doomed and blessed and quite possibly all we have.”

We were lucky enough to get the opportunity to ask John and Eric from the band a few questions.

Jon: Thanks for speaking to us John. How is life in LA this time of year? Why did you decide to move from Chicago? 

Young Jesus: Life in LA is good. It’s certainly a strange place, easy to let it own you in a way, but also a highly motivating and inspiring place. There is a lot going on here that I really was not exposed to in Chicago. Chicago’s a wonderful place for me in many ways, but it became ‘home’ too much. I had an idea of what it was in my mind, so I wasn’t really open to a lot of the interesting things the city had to offer. It became a place where I drank a lot and played a lot of videogames. Both have their merits, but I personally needed to get out. It’s interesting that Home, to me, is a pretty straightforward record– almost journalistic. And I was hazy and drunk through a lot of it. Grow / Decompose is meandering, questioning, more subtle I hope. But I’ve never been more clear-headed. I guess the easier it is to think, the more questions come.

One thing I’ve noticed while reading up on Young Jesus is that no-one seems to agree as to who you sound like. I’ve seen Smashing Pumpkins, The Replacements, Staind, The National etc. etc., while I picked up some strong Hold Steady vibes, both in terms of your writing style and the dark-and-joyful sound. Do your listening habits reflect this wide(ish) range comparisons? Or are journalists and bloggers trying too hard to pin your sound? 

We listen to a lot of different things. From The Hold Steady and Pile to William Basinski and Stars of the Lid. It all plays a part in the thinking of a record. It might not be obvious while listening, but our musical influences affect things beyond melody/rhythm. Little eccentricities come out in strange ways. That’s what makes it interesting hopefully.

As a follow-on to that, how do you feel after releasing a new record to the world? Do you like that reviewers each come to their own conclusions? Or do you feel pretty certain of the narrative you’re trying to conjure? I was kind of guilty of bringing a lot of my own thoughts into my review of the album, and I guess I was conscious that perhaps that isn’t always a good thing for the artist? 

We have a narrative in our heads definitely. But a huge part of the narrative is that there is no absolute correct narrative. We’re glad to see people put their own interpretations on it cause that means they’re interacting with it. They’re having a similar process sorting through the album that we had sorting through life to create the album. I have a huge mental picture of records like Brand New’s Devil and God… or Weezer’s Pinkerton. And it’s probably so different from how they view it! That’s so great. That we ultimately have a point of intersection/relation and have– potentially– come to it from totally different places. Albums (as Roger Ebert said about movies) can be machines that generate empathy.

Grow / Decompose, just like your previous album Home, seems to focus on a defined set of themes and characters in a way that makes it not quite a traditional album but perhaps not quite a concept album. How do you feel about the term ‘concept album’ in relation to your releases? 

I became pretty engrossed in this album over the past year. It took over my life in a lot of ways. I gave myself to this record rather than to people, and at one point couldn’t really see a love that was there for me because I was so absorbed in the story/writing. I loved Neil, Milo, and May. So the concept is a strange reflection of life. Grounded in reality. Without a traditional arc because life doesn’t have that. Some things end, some don’t.

There is a decidedly novelistic feel about your writing. Would you say literature has an influence on your writing style? (If yes) Which authors would you say have had the biggest impact? 

I work in a bookstore and am reading more than I’m listening to music probably. Literature has had a major influence. The five main books are Hilda Hilst’s The Obscene Madam D, Clarice Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart, Mircea Cartrescu’s Blinding, Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor, and Suicide by Edouard Leve. And Muriel Spark. So six. These books very literally changed my life this past year. Oh and Jesse Jacobs By This Shall You Know Him.

Lispector/Cartrescu/Hilst showed me that it was okay (and beautiful) to think in absurd, non-normative logics. That you could create your own, and these logics are capable of carrying emotional/sentimental weight.

Reading Leve felt like breaking the law. It’s a work he turned in to his publisher and soon after killed himself. In fact, I could read it and feel safer. I do think it is a dangerous book, not for everyone, but for me it was a powerful life-affirming read. Almost named the record Les Atomes which is a band mentioned in one of Leve’s books (either Suicide or Autoportrait, I forget).

O’Connor and Spark deal with religion (specifically Christianity) in a rare way. They are ultimately believers, but are not afraid of examining the grotesque byproducts of belief. It’s easy to write off organized religion, maybe a bit harder then to look at it very honestly and specifically and turn the lens onto yourself as well. I’m an atheist, but some of my favorite thinkers (Spark, O’Connor, Jeff Mangum) are oddly Christian. Who knows what that means. Time to become a priest.

With its stories of addiction and general sadness shot through with a sense of hope, I compared Grow / Decompose to David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Where do you stand on the whole irony vs. sincerity debate? Do you subscribe to the New Sincerity movement, or do you feel cynicism and darkness have role to play in the best, most enlightening/comforting art?   

I think you can confront darkness with sincerity and that the best stuff acknowledges the light that is in the dark and vice versa. We’re on board and interested with what New Sincerity could be about, and if people want to group us in with that, that’s okay. But we can also be sarcastic and ironic. So watch out.

You guys run the label Hellhole Supermarket that is putting out Grow / Decompose and take care of all of your own press and management. Is this sort of control important to you? I mean, I know there are some great labels out there, and some PR companies who make the effort to connect as human beings, but I can’t tell you how nice it is to get personal emails from acts about their new music. Does this increased involvement lead to a more rewarding process overall? Or is it an annoyance that gets in the way of music (or watching TV or whatever)?

I always tell Harrison, “if this label gets in the way of BBT (Big Bang Theory) one more time I’m gonna lose my smoothie.” I love those bang boys.

Finally, could you name 4-5 artists you are currently enjoying? They can be old or new, hidden gems or radio darlings, whatever you find yourself returning to at the moment.

Fragile Gang‘s For Esme, Pope, Mitski, Princess Reason, Earl Sweatshirt (‘solace’ is connecting a lot today).

Read our review of Grow / Decompose and then buy the album from Bandcamp or Hellhole Supermarket.

The post Interview: Young Jesus appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Nearly three years after Home (a stint in which some of the band played as Bummer), Young Jesus announced a new album and unveiled a brand new single, ‘G’, a song which prompted us to say:

“I don’t want to write too much based on one single, but this seems to be going a step further than your standard indie-rock fare”

As hinted above, we were predisposed to hold this opinion. Home left us with some pretty high expectations for the band, in particular their writing and lead John Rossiter’s delivery. ‘G’ and the album trailer (see below) merely confirmed our suspicions. After spending some time with the full-length, it’s safe to safe that these feelings were justified.

Just as with Home, Grow / Decompose is not a traditional eleven-songs-with-three-singles record, but neither is it a full concept album. It’s something between the two, pinned together by a set of central themes and characters whilst escaping the pitfalls and constraints of a “concept album”. For this reason the album is reminiscent of Craig Finn’s writing, which to me is high praise indeed. The word ‘novelistic’ would come close if only Grow / Decompose didn’t bring to mind the very novels which play with the conventions of the form. Our preview mentioned David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest as a comparison and this seems to reach far further than the shared transvestic tendencies (of G / D’s Neil and IJ’s Tony Krause) cited as reasoning. Not only does the album have the same broad, scattered and vaguely cyclical structure as the novel, but Young Jesus’ music also shares Wallace’s metamodern style – a postmodern web of motifs and strange humour countered with a modernist sincerity and genuine sense of hope.

It’s not only in structure that Grow / Decompose brings to mind Infinite Jest. Their juxtaposition of bleak mental turmoil with buoyant (or at least fervent) emotion and hope is integral to the Young Jesus aesthetic. Again a parallel to The Hold Steady’s style, this combination provides a sense of depth that would be absent from something aligned purely to misery or joy. This makes the album, at least to my ears, very much a product of the twenty-first century. We aren’t always sad, or always happy, or always good or evil or apathetic or nihilistic or idealistic to the point of stupidity. We are all of these things and none of them and it can be hard work trying to fathom how to retain a sense of self while being in such a state of confusion. What I’m getting at is, like Infinite Jest, Grow / Decompose resists the temptation of satire and cynicism to paint real people stuck in this madness.

As the title describes so neatly, Grow / Decompose speaks of the familiar paths that human lives follow. Despite all the strangeness, the characters here are going through the age-old problems – depression, anxiety, identity crises, existential terror – the problems of being You and You alone, Molina’s “curse of a human’s life”. For all of the complexity of our existence, we are still locked in the atavistic pattern of life and death, everyone more or less condemned to the same mistakes and fears and joys that we as human beings have been experiencing for generations (“You don’t start clean,” tells the refrain of ‘Brothers’, “spines are twisting in the rings. This old tree, been around before you were born”). In this way the album is both pessimistic and hopeful, a statement that we seem unable to change for the better and a reminder that we are united by this monumental whammy. As Rossiter sings on ‘Oranges’: “She’s a believer in the relief / that we’re all receivers of suffering”.

Degeneration is a major theme and the whole record is imbued with an odd pleasure/pain relationship, accentuated with grotesque imagery. Take for example opener ‘EMP’: “So go ahead and search your chest, the slugs and inchworms know it best.” This brought to mind the book Threats by Amelia Gray, in which a man named David descends the spirals of grief after losing his wife. With death and decay quite literally pervading his house and life, David finds himself both terrified by his situation yet drawn towards some obscure peace with it, as if giving in to a dark and fungal siren. The characters on Grow / Decompose are similarly troubled and lonely, be they confused and unhappy with their identity (‘G’), saddled with unwanted children and gripped by overwhelming numbness (‘Oranges’) or using drugs and forming half-imagined relationships with television presenters (‘Slug’ and ‘Brothers’). Dissociated from others, they achieve the sort of heightened peculiarity of southern gothic hermits, existing within the confines of their own logic and physics, a world where the hope or possibility of connection or meaning flutters along rarely, staccato and unannounced.

The result is a manic-depressive relationship with their irregularity. On ‘Blood and Guts’ the character holds his weirdness aloft like a banner intended to confirm himself or terrify others, marching towards epiphany or entropy like Gray’s David. The title character in ‘Milo’, who sits somewhere near McCarthy’s Lester Ballard on the scale of Southern Gothic hermits, continues the perverse pleasure with the clear-eyed conviction of a serial killer, delighted by the gory truths of life and death. Milo is the depraved character, one who seems to have pushed past anxiety and apathy to realise his potential as a monster (“He paints his face and feels a brightness / glowing brighter inside / the cave he built out of the thorax / of the organist’s hide”). With his humanity stripped away he becomes a prophet who “sings the world as it’s shown”, the cyclical, elemental theme returning with its closing chant:

“All the birds singing
all the plants growing
all the wind blowing
all the bugs crawling
all the birds breaking
all the plants dying
all the wind crawling
and the blood flowing
and the waves breaking
with the birds singing
and the plants speaking
to the wind dying”

It seems important that the end of the final track ‘Dirt’ shares the same chords and drone as the opener, so that the end loops back to the beginning (another similarity to Infinite Jest). If played on repeat Grow / Decompose never ends, a musical ouroboros of well-worn paths that are both doomed and blessed and quite possibly all we have.

Grow / Decompose is out on the 13^th May via Hellhole Supermarket and you can pre-order buy it now on CD and cassette, or on vinyl via Gigantic Noise.

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