Pitchfork
July 17, 2009
Link
8.6
0101, 0103, 0107, 0108, 0113, and 0115. Since all jj choose to show of themselves is their music, video, and occasional blood-spattered merch, then those Sincerely Yours catalogue numbers represent the sum total of what we know about them. Hell, we wouldn't even know jj were a "them" had the group's Gothenburg, Sweden-based, Tough Alliance-owned label not confirmed that. So... they're mysterious-- but not inscrutable: Despite a brief discography that's already geekily byzantine enough for anybody who ever bought into the legend of Factory Records, jj's full-length debut is as easy to enjoy as whatever the last CD was you brought home with a giant cannabis leaf on the cover. They're as naive as they are cynical-- or is it the other stupid way around?-- and they manage to be pretty, touching, funny, and motivating, in different ways, in all the right places, for nine songs lasting 28 minutes.
You don't need me to tell you for the 128th time (320th if you're at CD quality) how digital file distribution has spread sounds and ideas across the globe during the current decade, and jj have earned a place among the current wave of pop globalization, sharing both the island sounds and sticky-fingered irreverence of their labelmates the Tough Alliance, Air France, and the Honeydrips. Sure, jj still carry traces of iconic twee label Sarah Records, but they celebrate a broader definition of "pop". Sometimes, as on "Lollipop"-biting slo-mo raver "Ecstasy", jj do this by borrowing from global hip-hop culture. But they also participate. Never by straight-up rapping, but by expanding the reach of ambient music-- defined expansively, as Brian Eno once did, as music that "suggests, a place, a landscape, a soundworld which you inhabit"-- to include a whole new kind of swagger. "Of course there is people out to get me," a female vocalist sings on "My Hopes and Dreams" as hand percussion evokes the Avalanches' beach blowouts, hypnotic guitar recalls German Kosmiche Muzik, and gusts of winds whistle over high-noon Ennio Morricone strings.
Then again, on the same song, jj's singer just wants "someone to share my hopes and dreams with"-- a humbler goal to be sure, but jj excel just as much at strummy intimacy as they do at lavish blissouts. The lo-fi hooks on "Tell It to My Heart"-biting closer "Me & Dean" suggests TTA's aching teen-pop cover "Lucky", only done as an original this time. The pisstake-y giggles also make you wonder if you're hearing their mixtape outro.
When jj drift closer to early-1990s ambient-house, they still allow emotion to flood through the textures, and they never start repeating themselves. Opener "Things Will Never Be the Same Again" sets almost new-agey strings and Enya-esque sailing imagery to a bouncy Caribbean rhythm: "I close my eyes and remember/ A place in the sun where we used to live." For all the flickering synths and rainforest percussion of "Masterplan", we also get Top Gun guitar rocketry, faux-innocent-as-Disney sing-song, and that reporter guy from YouTube going, "I'm dyin' in this fucking country-ass fucked-up town." jj n° 2 may be easy on the ears, but it isn't wallpaper.
At their most ideal, ambient, hip-hop, punk, and the most crassly commercial pop all have in common an "anything goes" approach. Like any ideal, this usually gets fucked up pretty fast. "New Age" harnesses ambient's chill-out pleasantness to eco-politics and yuppie mysticism; old rappers start dissing younger rappers for not following in their footsteps or being more socially conscious; the punk and indie traditions become as idol-worshiping as the classic-rockers they sought to displace. jj obliterate that bullshit and get back to a place where Lil Wayne can be ambient, and Enya can show up on an album with a pot leaf on the cover.
Free mp3 "From Africa to Málaga", on some days my favorite track on the album, is almost as suited for a cruise-ship commercial as Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life". But it also faces Important Ideas like death and art with the clear-eyed precocity of an adolescent, riding in on trade winds with a message that could speak to middle-school cheerleaders and middle-aged soccer moms and middlebrow-loathing former punks alike: "The thought that you found/ Takes you to town/ Smashes your face/ Burns out your heart/ Then you go home and turn it into art." Pop's just fine, too, thanks.
You don't need me to tell you for the 128th time (320th if you're at CD quality) how digital file distribution has spread sounds and ideas across the globe during the current decade, and jj have earned a place among the current wave of pop globalization, sharing both the island sounds and sticky-fingered irreverence of their labelmates the Tough Alliance, Air France, and the Honeydrips. Sure, jj still carry traces of iconic twee label Sarah Records, but they celebrate a broader definition of "pop". Sometimes, as on "Lollipop"-biting slo-mo raver "Ecstasy", jj do this by borrowing from global hip-hop culture. But they also participate. Never by straight-up rapping, but by expanding the reach of ambient music-- defined expansively, as Brian Eno once did, as music that "suggests, a place, a landscape, a soundworld which you inhabit"-- to include a whole new kind of swagger. "Of course there is people out to get me," a female vocalist sings on "My Hopes and Dreams" as hand percussion evokes the Avalanches' beach blowouts, hypnotic guitar recalls German Kosmiche Muzik, and gusts of winds whistle over high-noon Ennio Morricone strings.
Then again, on the same song, jj's singer just wants "someone to share my hopes and dreams with"-- a humbler goal to be sure, but jj excel just as much at strummy intimacy as they do at lavish blissouts. The lo-fi hooks on "Tell It to My Heart"-biting closer "Me & Dean" suggests TTA's aching teen-pop cover "Lucky", only done as an original this time. The pisstake-y giggles also make you wonder if you're hearing their mixtape outro.
When jj drift closer to early-1990s ambient-house, they still allow emotion to flood through the textures, and they never start repeating themselves. Opener "Things Will Never Be the Same Again" sets almost new-agey strings and Enya-esque sailing imagery to a bouncy Caribbean rhythm: "I close my eyes and remember/ A place in the sun where we used to live." For all the flickering synths and rainforest percussion of "Masterplan", we also get Top Gun guitar rocketry, faux-innocent-as-Disney sing-song, and that reporter guy from YouTube going, "I'm dyin' in this fucking country-ass fucked-up town." jj n° 2 may be easy on the ears, but it isn't wallpaper.
At their most ideal, ambient, hip-hop, punk, and the most crassly commercial pop all have in common an "anything goes" approach. Like any ideal, this usually gets fucked up pretty fast. "New Age" harnesses ambient's chill-out pleasantness to eco-politics and yuppie mysticism; old rappers start dissing younger rappers for not following in their footsteps or being more socially conscious; the punk and indie traditions become as idol-worshiping as the classic-rockers they sought to displace. jj obliterate that bullshit and get back to a place where Lil Wayne can be ambient, and Enya can show up on an album with a pot leaf on the cover.
Free mp3 "From Africa to Málaga", on some days my favorite track on the album, is almost as suited for a cruise-ship commercial as Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life". But it also faces Important Ideas like death and art with the clear-eyed precocity of an adolescent, riding in on trade winds with a message that could speak to middle-school cheerleaders and middle-aged soccer moms and middlebrow-loathing former punks alike: "The thought that you found/ Takes you to town/ Smashes your face/ Burns out your heart/ Then you go home and turn it into art." Pop's just fine, too, thanks.
