Jack J likes to create a vibe solely to harsh it. The Australian Canadian producer debuted within the mid-2010s with two acclaimed singles of luxurious deep home that introduced crucial consideration to Vancouver’s fertile digital scene and the Temper Hut collective he cofounded. However his two full-lengths have been marked by decreased music lengths and startlingly morose lyrics, delivered in a voice whose untrained reediness solely makes his supply really feel that rather more pressing. In 2022, Opening the Door solid him as an indie-rock unhappy sack not too far faraway from fellow Canadian Mac DeMarco, however his new album Blue Desert embraces a variety of classic references, from smooth new wave to ’90s chillout and diva home. The draggy sultriness of all of it makes the distinction along with his lyrics much more jarring: a space-age equal of Adam Sandler in The Marriage ceremony Singer, exorcizing his deepest emotions via cocktail music.
The lyrics level to a traumatic breakup, however with Jutson you may by no means make sure. He’s notoriously press-shy—that’s most probably him on the duvet, wanting like a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and a cult chief in billowing white pantaloons—so it’s arduous to inform how critically to take his on-record pleas. (His most detailed interview up to now, with Shawn Reynaldo’s First Ground publication, reticently touched on a “arduous time” in his life however didn’t go into a lot element.) Mix that with the downtempo slant of the music and also you’ve received a recipe for nearly insufferable passive aggression. He seduces you into underestimating his music by setting the tempo at a simmer and the vibes at couchlock. Then he makes clear that every one will not be effectively—that there’s one thing deeper occurring, that possibly you may’t simply write this off as one other rose-tinted pastiche.
Blue Desert is a compact hear; it’s over within the time it takes to get via roughly three listens of Jutson’s most beloved observe, 2014’s “One thing (On My Thoughts).” Few songs surpass 4 minutes, and a few appear to finish or fade out one refrain sooner than they need to. He appears to toggle to the subsequent thought as quickly as he thinks of it. You get the sense of a disordered thoughts—of an individual whose ideas are burning too scorching and too quick to have the ability to sink right into a groove just like the “Present Me Love” organ home of “Incorrect Once more,” the monster Andrew Weatherall lope of “Down the Line,” or the ambient, virtually Knife-like keyboard creepiness of the “Pink Footwear” diptych. Followers who got here to Jack J’s early work for its unhurried tempo and lackadaisical tone could discover the expertise of listening to Blue Desert jarring, however had it been allowed to run longer, it may need been a bit too straightforward for the listener to zone out.
