This week, in no particular order: tracks from Splash by Jeremy Jay, Make You Mine by Best Coast, Looking for Some Action by Bare Wires, Travellers in Space and Time by Apples in Stereo, and Hologram Jams by Jaguar Love.

Jeremy Jay:  Jeremy Jay is incredibly prolific these days–his latest album (the first of two set for release this year) is called Splash and comes out in March on K.  To be honest, Slow Dance set an unbelievably high bar that Splash mostly fails to surpass.  All the same, it’s a wonderful and increasingly consistent effort from Jeremy Jay, in which he again lays claim to a hyper-specific pop territory, uniquely anglophile and Godard-modern in execution, sprinkled with trademark synthesizers and a cold, wistful feel.  The two tracks below are prime material: Dial features baroquely-stylized vocals atop a busy, hi-hat drum and a delicate piano beat, while in Our Time, those same vocals adorn a glam rock guitar hook that’s reminisent of T. Rex at its finest. 

• Out On The HighwayOut On The Highway
• This Is Our TimeThis is Our Time

Best Coast:  Cutting to the chase, this band represents an incremental yet clear improvement upon the formula previously explored by the Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls, Frankie And The Outs, et al.  Best Coast’s vocals are slightly superior to those of their compatriots, their melodies are stronger and clearer, the rhythm section is more sophisticated, and, if your eyes were closed, you might opine that the Vivian Girls haven’t crafted songs so good since Where Do You Run To.  The use of a hazy production aesthetic on these tracks, together with their mundane lyrical concerns and stoned tempo,  tweaks the Runaways obsession of Best Coast’s peers sufficently that the band can engage with their audience’s actual memories of adolescent, suburban heartache, rather than the obsessions of an imaginary teenage Joan Jett.

• Make You MineMake You Mine
• Feeling of LoveFeeling of Love

Bare Wires:  Apparently this band’s already released a full-length, which I went back and listened to after checking out their new 7″.  Looking For Some Action is definitely an improvement upon what came before, though I now know that Bare Wires has been solid for some time now.  Actually, the band has a legitimately amazing pedigree, founded by Alicia Trout from Lost Sounds (my favorite Jay Reatard side project); in case of any doubt, know that they more than deliver on any expectations that this backstory promises.  Without rambling on, Looking sounds like a superior In The Red genre album, maybe like a less stupid version of The Hunches or a less schticky King Khan.

• Looking For Some ActionLooking For Some Action

Apples In Stereo:  It isn’t as though Apples In Stereo are afraid of funk/dance music (see The Bird That You Can’t See off 2000’s The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone).  But with Travellers in Space and Time, they take things to a fantastic new level: danceable fuzz that isn’t cartoon disco or Sgt. Pepper psychedelics.  To my ears, Travellers‘ breezy, pitch-perfect charm may have its closest cousin in Ariel Pink’s Can’t Hear My Eyes 7″ on Mexican Summer: the burned-out late-70s feel of these tracks is palpable, yet doesn’t feel like a calculated effort or a nostalgia act.  In a just world, this album should portend a Flaming Lips-level future for the band, assuming they can avoid a future scoring Brady Bunch sequal soundtracks.

• Told You OnceTold You Once
• Dance FloorDance Floor
• Hey ElevatorHey Elevator

Jaguar Love:  Pitchfork’s assessment of Hologram Jams better deserves a 2.0 than the album it reviews.  This isn’t genius (were the Blood Brothers ever ”geniuses?”) but it’s tons of spastic fun, like shotgunning a Sparks Black before those spoilsports took away all the taurine.  I was going to add more details about this LP but the Sparks Black description actually summarizes things pretty nicely.  Does the now-a-duo band’s hyperative, gleefully plasticine concept get a little old over the course of however many tracks and/or albums?  Sure, and these lyrics aren’t exactly Mark E. Smith caliber.  But if you don’t care, I won’t pretend to either.  Besides the song below, please, by all that’s holy, check out the ridiculous video for the album’s best single: Started A Fire.

• A Prostitute, An AngelA Prostitute, An Angel

This week’s post, accordingly, references not the band Low (2 weeks back!) but my failure to post last week.  Jeremy Jay has had the foresight NOT ONLY to be one of my absolute favorite musicians at the moment, but to record songs entitled “Can We Disappear,” “Till we Meet Again,” “Escape to Aspen,” etc. etc.  Guy loves absence and vacations and I’ll take it as an excuse to write about him here.

Jeremy Jay is on K records, and presents somewhat of a twee, faux naive personna, but his obsessions are more Clientele and Aislers Set than Beat Happening.  Melancholy, rainy days and pea coats spent dancing to 45s in a chalet, not picnicking with your best girl by the car.  My own “best girl” claims there’s an obvious Smiths sound to Jeremy’s voice but, to me, he sounds simultaneously less melodramatic and more glammed up than our pompadoured friend.  Jay Reatard is the last artist I remember noticing who cranked both accoustic and electric rhythm guitars equally high in the mix, giving them a real punch over the bass line, and somehow this ends up making everyone sound (to me) like Bowie playing Queen Bitch on repeat.  Jeremy Jay uses this method to great effect, which is appropriate considering he reminds me of Bowie anyway, down to the fragile good looks and voice.  In the main, early recorded tracks tended to be slower and more thoughtful than their live versions but, recently, the two seem to have reached a happy medium, and swooning synth lines have replaced piano on his most recent albums.

With what reasonably consistutes a “prolific” output (3 full lengths in a couple of years, plus several EPs and singles) there are definitely a few works of uneven quality in Jay’s discography, though his percentage is improving rapidly.  I’ve included my 5 favorite songs below in unashamed fanboy glee.

• Escape to Aspen Escape to Aspen
• We Were There We Were There
• Where Could We Go Tonight Where Could We Go Tonight
• Slow Dance Slow Dance
• In This Lonely Town In This Lonely Town