Jealousy - "√iles" LP - Moniker Records
Jealousy – “We’re Having Your Children” from √iles, on Moniker Records
√iles is a bleak mess of an album, frostier than coldwave by about 18 degrees, hotter than even the most scalding spoken-word bits of scree spread out around indie culture (Bryan Lewis Saunders excepted because he’s practically a perv — more on him soon) and scarier than just about every psych-fueled outfit roaming the noise range.
I get all manner of disparate vibes from Jealousy:
- any discussion of music in this vein — and we’re talking about material wherein the message is just as important as the music — has to shift to The Fall, Disco Inferno and Wire; they’re everywhere, and definitely here (though Mark E. Smith and company use(d) drums more often)
- a lot of the riffs, if you can call them that, carry a strange scent I associate most with anti-jangle punk cretins like (early) Scritti Politti, Unwound, Sonic Youth and Argument-era Fugazi
- Edward Ka-Spel and Legendary Pink Dots spill into the creases of many of these bleak soundscapes
- a few of chillwave’s hallmarks bounce in and out (particularly those rushes of wind that keep reminding me of the mouth-moves of Ariel Pink)
- one of the tunes on Side A is just like one of those cuts from the first Pink Priest LP
- when he goes barebones, without the electric squalls, I think of Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, who put out a cool record on Load recently
- the mostly drums-less proceedings warp me to 2002 and Eric Alexandrakis
- the megaphone’d, echo-vox of Indian Jewelry are a constant
- this is what I always imagined a mellow (as in not puking, or having sex with groupies onstage) Gibby Haynes solo rec would sound like
Despite taking the above cracks at it, I feel I’ve failed to capture √iles‘ beauty, as it truly inhabits an incredibly sleek, deep-leather enclave many of us have buried deep in the core of our stupid skulls but failed to acknowledge or even comprehend.
I feel the singer is reaching out to someone or something, but ultimately knows whoever or whatever he pines for isn’t listening in the first place. I’d go down on a lawman for a printout of the lyrics; as it stands, I’m only managing to understand scraps ripped from a larger book I plan to read when I have the technology to separate voice from instrument. Maybe that’s best — his inflection and moments of melody say it all: I’m weathered. I’m cracked but not broken. I’m angry, and for good reason.
Aren’t we all? Sadly, I don’t think so. I think a lot of us think we have it made when we’re really just comfortable sitting around in our own filth. “And my life / is in prison,” Jealousy says with the unflinching dearth of emotion required of those so sick that if they revealed their authentic mindset they might be arrested or miscast in the theater of life. And what good is being incarcerated by the Law when you’ve already got your own mental shackles to contend with? (Is that weird of me to write?)
Obviously we’re not going to delve into all that right now, but I leave you with this: Jealousy’s bravery is unrivaled by a lot of the subpar Sun Araw paw-trackers mucking up the moat encircling the indie-rock castle of dreams; if you own a half-dozen Ducktails or Blues Control records/7-inches and not this LP you’re dead in the water, following the kind of kids that put Passion Pit in power.
YOU DULL ME!
