One can’t help but feel the feral trill of vocalist/pianist Johnny Whitney course through the opening track, “Highways of Gold” (and through their extremities, for that matter). It’s a great song, one that seems to loosely establish the theme of the album, Take Me To The Sea, the first full-length by Jaguar Love. Movement is at its center—fast, across a windswept mountainous spine, and without pause for the pretty things. Whitney sounds positively feminine, a jilted, rusty falsetto placing his band more in line with Sleater-Kinney’s frenetic Riot Grrrl guitar rock act than other, more gender apropos comparisons.
It only takes a few tracks into the ten-track album to recognize that Whitney isn’t being cute. This torpor is the backbone of the band. Witness other tremendously stormy dance/aneurysm songs like “Jaguar Pirates” and the star, “Bats Over The Pacific Ocean.” Take Me To The Sea is filled with these guttersnipe-toned, oceanic tracks, and Whitney’s vocals make it possible for them to safely avoid triteness. It’s like pop sensibilities splashed all over beach art. The song “Georgia” is almost old-fashioned in its single female subject and plaintive vocal setup laid over spiraling classical progressions. A haunted blues sound inspires songs like “Humans Evolve Into Skyscrapers” and dance speed creates the theme of “Antoine And Birdskull.” All over the record there are indications of raw, spirited genius.
Like a conscientious writer, Whitney leaves theme all over his work. Bones. Birds. A lot of ocean. It feels like a theme album, the work of deliberate, confident artifice. It’s a volatile record, too, and not for everyone, but there is a point about six tracks into Take Me To The Sea that even the jaded listener has to know it isn’t a flip series of tracks. Jaguar Love have built a near masterwork.
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