Jockstrap
I Love You Jennifer B
ROUGH TRADE
ABOVE THE CURRENT
Jockstrap knew exactly what they were doing when they chose that name. Slightly provocative and just a little bit gross, it evokes an image of muscly guys in a damp locker room with questionable hygiene. It’s somewhat of a misnomer for a couple of quiet conservatory kids making art-minded pop music, but in that contradiction lies the key to their project. Classically trained but raised on the internet, Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye bonded at London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama not over symphonies and stuffy lecture halls, but rather pints at student dance nights. Their heroes aren’t 18th century composers, but early-aughts dubstep producers like Flux Pavilion and Skrillex.
That said, those expecting some garish mashup of light jazz and car-crash bass drops will be keen to look elsewhere, as Jockstrap are far too skilled and entirely too clever to aim so low. What they do glean from EDM’s rhythmic chug is a pervasive sense of danger and a love of incongruent textures. They apply these lessons in cheeky ways, subtly distorting the traditional signifiers and tools of jazz and folk into misshapen forms entirely their own.
Most of the songs on their debut, I Love You Jennifer B, take what would appear as ill-advised right turns, and yet each lands with grace. Sudden percussive hits often disrupt the tranquil flow of Ellery’s exquisite voice and prose, but never fully succumb to hedonism. Sounds that seem disagreeable on paper come together in disfigured harmony: Nylon-string guitars and synth bass, chorale vocals and harsh reverberant noise, pastoral instrumentation run through bedroom pop filters. There’s a strange feeling lurking within each of these songs, as if some drop or extra musical element is just beyond the horizon, a shoe that’s yet to drop.
None of these things should work, and yet Jockstrap seems to thread the needle just right. Sure, there’s a slightly perverse sense of humor to their untangling (after all, they named their record after a message you’d most likely finally scrawled into a tree trunk), but none of their music comes on in jest. The twists and turns feel not overwrought, but more like a natural outgrowth of the explosion of music discovery afforded to people of a certain age.
For all the talk of their theatricality, Jockstrap kick off I Love You Jennifer B with little more than acoustic guitar and Ellery’s voice, unadorned. In fact, “Neon” nearly tricks you into thinking it’s just a simple folk song before the gnarly distorted drums and a descending electric piano come crashing into frame to disrupt the peace. The song ends nowhere near where it began, as the drums fall out and a symphonic sweep of shoegaze guitar fades gently away.
Similar antics abound in the record’s middle section. The sparse “Angst” is built from little more than some Oneohtrix-esque stuttering finger pianos and Ellery’s crystal-clear vocals that glide along until the song’s frantic final third. “Glasgow” also employs the pianos before building into a triumphant, strings-assisted sway that could soundtrack any number of coming-of-age films. “Greatest Hits” is a nostalgic bit of electronica with a dusty ’90s-era boom-bap drum break that folds into a light funk showcase for Ellery’s diva vocal moment. Skye handles these changes with a deft hand, navigating hairpin turns without disrupting the immaculate vibe.
Jockstrap end Jennifer B with a newly extended run through last year’s “50/50.” A horny and hyperactive slice of filter house in its initial form, this new version beefs up the abstraction even further. Ellery’s vocals and the air-raid synths surrounding them are rendered nearly intelligible with a fresh chop—a loving nod from Skye to the fried quality of YouTube-to-MP3 rips. What can be made out still sounds like a low-effort booty call.
Much like Ellery’s other group, the bookish post-rock collective Black Country, New Road, each Jockstrap release is as much a document of what’s in their rearview as it is a roadmap for their future. In that case, I Love You Jennifer B offers the group plenty of paths to consider, and based on the eclecticism at the heart of this project, there’s probably at least a dozen more for them to exhume.
