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I’m not sure that anybody’s outright dismissed Jaill as a joke band before, but there’s always been a perception that the Milwaukee psych-pop band is, at the very least, less than serious. They carry themselves with an innate wryness, so it’s not always easy to tell when the band is being sincere and when they’re being tongue in cheek, if not outright snarky, and for some listeners that can be off-putting. No doubt that was at least a small part of the reason the band never had the reach of some of their more earnest Sub Pop labelmates in the early ’10s.
But Jaill have always had more to say than they’ve been given credit for, and each of their albums has been more heartfelt than the last, including last year’s Brain Cream, a pretty, often plaintive album about the long shadows that anxieties cast. The trend carries through the band’s new release for Infinity Cat’s subscription-only cassette series, Wherever It Be. By design, it’s looser and slighter than Brain Cream. That album had a meticulousness to it, but frontman Vincent Kircher recorded this one alone in his home, and its scaled-back arrangements leave the swooning vulnerability in his songs nothing to hide behind. Wherever It Be may be a minor release, but these are some of Kircher’s sweetest, saddest, most straight-up lovable songs yet.
The cassette tape comes out tomorrow. You can stream it below.
