Splash

Modern heartbreaker glam. Third LP from a retro romantic out of Los Angeles (though the internets inform me he’s moved house to London) who belongs behind a coffeeshop mike -- or in the cassette deck of your mother’s car. Lots of air, lots of ‘ooh’s. Lyrics about walking around cold city streets at night, alone or with girls in pea coats. Way more electric guitar on this record than you usually get from Jeremy Jay, who sounds like he was raised exclusively on Bowie and The Smiths. Vox are half-spoken, half-theatric. When he sings about love, he has a way of sounding like he’s... read about it. Minimalist, thin sound. Not that that’s a bad thing.

try: 1, 2, 4
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*1. easy draggy strummed rhythm. winding, morrissey-style ‘ooh’s and ‘da da da’s. electric guitar clangship towards the middle.
*2. pretty upbeat bellsy keys, tambourine, light-touch train track drums. electric guitar accents, especially towards the end. super cute. ‘i’m so far away from you you start to disappear.’
3. fast, zoomy, whiplashy -- comparatively speaking. zagging electric guitar and muddy vocals.
*4. repeated storyteller vox. nice combo of choked guitar and straight-up-and-down chords. winding electric lines. ‘ooh’s.
5. downtempo. mellow bass and fingersnaps. later, some soft piano. picks up into lush guitar-and-tambourine soundscape choruses.
6. scattered start. echoey, muddy dig-in crunch/rudder guitar and nice spare use of synth. check out the morrissey-styled vox.
7. midtempo, but fractured. rockish guitar. slightly agitated vox. something like a demo of a punk ballad (or a ballad of a punk demo, as it were).
8. mid-slow lounger. fuzzy ballroom piano and lots of cymbal tapping.
9. chill high-hopping electric guitar riff a la vampire weekend. croony and bellowy.