The band is comprised of three men: a drummer, a bass guitarist who also seems in charge of the sampler, and a trumpet player. They are spread apart on the stage’s surface, music the common denominator. Naturally, your ear gravitates toward the trumpeter.

At first, the eye is almost fooled into thinking it is going to watch some kind of new wave show. and, that’s not too far off. With the amount of digital music equipment on stage, the trumpeter is the only remnant of jazz amidst the wires. And it works.

There is absolutely no other group like Jack Lion. Mixing lo-fi samples with jazzy upbeat overtones, this band is an impressive hybrid of the digital and analog. The group makes this sound coexist so well, it’s almost easy to forget just how innovative Jack Lion really is with their discography of genre meshing.

There is no apparent singer in the band. The crowd almost seemed alarmed half way through the set when one of the featured samples on the set list had even the hint of lyric attribute.

The music remains charged with feeling though, operating without a word. Lyrics seem needless with the type of thick harmonies this group employed throughout their set.

Each band member is a musician in their own right. The drummer alternated between rock rhythms and large scale drum breaks to slow-moving jazzy soft beats. The simple scrape of the drums would signify the meshing of genres. The bass guitarist, most center stage, operated a sampler and a bass, sometimes at the same time. Finally, the trumpet player came armed with a MacBook. This band’s creative quotient was so high, it felt like they were almost creating directly in front of you. Needless to say, the energy was electric.

Bands like Jack Lion prove that in the midst of soulless chart-topping pop, innovation still exists. Even further, it exists with a unity between genres that spand decades. Sometimes, these genres would coexist in a single song— the audience always felt on the same page as the group, creating a participatory live experience that was truly one-of-a-kind.

I left the show with the unforgettable sound of a trumpet, echoing toward the audience like a brassy bell. The harmonies unified with a sample of repetitive, measured beats and topped with rock-based drumming.

If you’d like to check out Jack Lion’s music, here is their bandcamp.

The post Witching Hour: Jack Lion @ Gabe’s 10/13/18 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Formed somewhere in sun-dripped San Diego, TV Girl is currently made up of Brad Petering, Jason Wyman, and Wyatt Harmon. Though previous collaborative member, Trung Ngo, had a huge creative hand in composing “French Exit”.

Petering’s voyeuristic lyrics and vocals play second string to the pulsating, lazed beats which envelop each track. This artistic inversion becomes a main signifier of TV Girl’s discography. Certainly, some would find Petering’s soft alto musings less inspired than other bands with more charismatic lead singers. Mostly, I appreciated the nuance.

This 12 track work combines low-fi synth beats with firm roots in indie. All of this is tightly wrapped with candid lyrics. Playful percussion dots most of these tracks. The top-ranked gem of the track list, “Louise”, pays slight homage to the stylistic moniker of fellow indie-band, The Drums, by combining ‘laxed, upbeat music paired with lyrics marking heartbreak, loss, and tragedy:

“She woke him up and she whispered

But the answer wasn’t good:

‘Whatever made you think I would ever love you

Even if I could?’”

The albums first single, “Birds Don’t Sing”, begins almost as if the main hook, complete with tambourine and brass overtones, is playing beyond a closed door. Simple guitar strumming becomes forefront here, creating a scene of someone possibly taking respite from a bass-heavy party to pick some chords alone.

This synesthesia can be invoked by a listener in a lot of tracks on this album. TV Girl is nothing short of expert in creating multi-layered imagery in which these songs exist. Further examples of that are found in tracks 5 and 9: “The Getaway” and “Lovers Rock” respectively, which feature samples from both American and French noir films.

This choice of sampling could have easily come across as contrived. However, the well-plotted musicality of this group is too sound to shake, even with the dubbed background vocals of Lauren Bacall-types. Instead, the samples add a narrative backbone to an album that otherwise could have seen the vocals swallowed by synth.

All 12 tracks easily take place in the same vernacular; TV Girl brands themselves both relentlessly and successfully. Described on the group’s Bandcamp page as “12 songs about lost lust, too much love and not enough,” the themes are arching and all-consuming. Oftentimes, all three of them converge in a single track.

More notably thematically, TV Girl provides consistently redefined descriptions of women. There is no one muse that this album chooses to “pixie” and spends all 12 tracks consumed by defining and lamenting. In other words, there is no tragic, trailing love story here.

With that said, most of these songs feature some kind of female pro- or antagonist. Lead singer Brad Petering leaves these descriptions of the women in his songs enigmatic, at times almost universal. This allows room for muse to exist as human, as opposed to desirable objects of consumption. It’s subtle, but a win nevertheless.

Overall, this album is a strong group debut. With catching melodic hooks, prosaic lyrics, and innovative sampling, TV Girl is a group largely overlooked in an ever-popularizing genre of music. Their freshman album boasts their chops and should rightfully toss their hat into the arena with the likes of other alt indie powerhouses like Vampire Weekend. 9/10 for French Exit.

Link to Bandcamp:

https://tvgirl.bandcamp.com

Link to ‘Lovers Rock’ Music Video:

https://youtu.be/ksEHfUof184

Link to ‘Birds Don’t Sing” single:

https://youtu.be/L3KHQfLBK_w

The post Innovation in an Undefinable Genre: TV Girl’s “French Exit” appeared first on KRUI Radio.