Everything is wet. Not soaking, not oozing, but there is a sparkling humidity in the air. Downtown is nearly void of people, save for Jay Arner who’s out “half drunk, just trying to make some laundry change”. It’s late at night on a Tuesday, after all. Streetlights dangle red in the rain-slicked blackness.
This is the first proper solo LP from the illustrious West Coast producer and (following the lineage of great recording engineers before him) it feels like it’s taken forever and is it ever understated. First listens may wash over the listener like the aforementioned weather, but shimmering beneath the haze is Arner’s whip-smart lyrics and deft sense of melody. Though these songs are rooted in power-pop, there’s more to do with accomplished crackle than addictive crack in this collection. As Arner sings on ‘Nightclubs’: “If you’re here for the veneer to crack, don’t hold your breath.”
All of that to say, the reserved malaise, the smoke-thick synthesizers, the unflappable rhythm section seem part of the master plan rather than any kind of failing. Similar to Destroyer’s Kaputt, this LP takes the trojan horse approach. By making clever use of texture, instrumentation and melody from more typically celebratory music, it’s able to sneak by as ‘a nice pop record’, when really, it has plenty of darkened edges and deep thoughts tucked inside; really, it makes me want to use the word ‘auteur’.
