Review Summary: Jockstrap's debut LP would actually kill a small Victorian child.
I Love You Jennifer B is the debut album of the year. Before I get to why, a little mythology building is needed. Jockstrap is half-Georgia Ellery of Black Country, New Road fame and half-Taylor Skye, who almost surely is some sort of futuristic astronaut raver plucked from some period of time in the distant future. The duo met while attending the Guildhall School of Music & Drama according to Wikipedia, but I would not be surprised to learn that Jockstrap’s origins actually date back to some sort of primordial pact with the devil. It’s just hard to imagine how else a band could be so crystallized and fully-formed from the jump, sounding already peerless on their previous two EP’s by combining Georgia’s whimsical string arrangements and angelic voice with Taylor’s downright demonic electronics. 2018’s
Love is the Key to the City sounded like the vague recollections of a drunken night out in a city drowning in fire and 2020’s
Wicked City took a turn for the weirder by ramping up the glitchy aspects and go-for-broke crescendos to dizzying heights. “City Hell” remains the “Bohemian Rhapsody” for people who need to log off immediately.
Which brings us back to the bold claim of
I love You Jennifer B being the debut LP of the year. One would be forgiven for thinking the band would rest on their laurels a bit and dig deeper into the sounds of their shorter efforts, but Jockstrap quickly prove that expectations are useless with them on the opening track “Neon”. It’s a track that, several listens in, still surprises me by how often it changes mood and tone. At first, it’s a somber acoustic track before melting into something more menacing with its chilling synths and once again reforms with a hazed out, borderline-shoegaze outro. That sort of tonal whiplash perfectly sets the mood for the left turns and moving targets that the rest of the nine tracks are.
Take, for instance, “Concrete Over Water”. It’s a song that just refuses to look you in the eye, not out of a lack of confidence, but because it simply has bigger fish to fry. Starting off as an aching ode to a depreciating relationship before piling on some of the most zonked out arpeggios and circus-esque chanting. You can practically hear the machinations of whatever their Willy Wonka-esque recording studio must look like, envisioning both of them one-upping the other with a Fruity Loops version of “yes and”.
Make no mistake, this is a
goofy record but it’s never anything less than sincere. “Angst” is a muted tale of self-loathing and when the lyrics begin to crescendo to a violent lump in your throat, the vocals speed up as if the imagery is too painful to recall. But then, clear as day, the next track opens up with Georgia recalling “Pain is real/ and love is real/ But pain is also growth/ And grief is just love with nowhere to go.” This is, of course, the preamble to “Debra” becoming a frontrunner for banger of the year with a refrain of “I wish I could tell you what I wished for/ Looked at the moon, press X at the star” over a beat that would sound just as home in a Bollywood movie as it would a robot factory in a jrpg. The incisions are often a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it affair, but they are no less captivating.
I could gush on and on the intricacies of every track -the euphoric “Glasgow”, the blissed out retro vibes of “Greatest Hits”, the world-ending beat switch on “50/50”, etc.- but it becomes an exercise in futility in the same way that explaining twitter lore is to someone in real life. At some point you just have to hear it for yourself.
I Love You Jennifer B confounds language and denies any easy description. It’s an endlessly replayable riddle that answers questions with only more questions. Jockstrap are an undeniable force that I can only assume arrived here because there are no more worlds to conquer. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Just don’t forget to add “band” to any google search.
