Typically a solo album from a songwriter who already fronts two bands would be the very definition of unnecessary, but coming from Jack Tell it actually makes sense, given how Tell’s other projects Animals in Human Attire and Lousy Trouts have ballooned into crowded, collaborative ensembles. The title of Tell’s new solo effort, Solo, then, can be taken as both a descriptor and a pledge, a vow to finally see through to fruition the “one dude and some songs” album that’s eluded him in the past.
And fittingly, especially for an album released in early January, the record opens with a resolution: “Letting Go in the New Year,” the first of many promises to be a better, more dependable, less self-absorbed human. These seven songs are concerned first and foremost with actualization, so they’re more grounded in the travails of everyday life than the grandiose parables of Animals in Human Attire’s fantastical latest album, Ourmegadawn. The music has been downsized too, looking particularly to that brief, brilliant window in the late ‘90s when The Microphones, Modest Mouse and a horde of like-minded lo-fi talent shared roster space on K Records. What carries through from Animals in Human Attire, however, is the determination: These are songs about moving forward.
You can stream Solo below, via Bandcamp, and catch Animals in Human Attire open for The Soil & The Sun on Wednesday, Jan. 21 at the Turner Hall Ballroom.
