Super-group’s new album brings maturity to emo-sound

The Jealous Sound releases their newest album “A Gentle Reminder” Jan. 31 and with it shows that emo music can mature and reach out to old and new adherents alike.

Emo—or emotional—music is one of those phenomena that is often loved by many young folks in their late teenage years and early twenties and, like any fashion including wild haircuts, goes in and out of popularity and seems to fade with time.

The Jealous Sound, composed of members from Knapsack, Sunday’s Best, Sunny Day Real Estate and Foo Fighters, are collectively reaching toward the middle of middle age, having started out in the ’90s in a post “Nevermind”-era and reaching some level of influence separately.

This album on the whole is a work of straightforward indie-flavored emo rock reminiscent of the period ten years ago when bands like Jimmy Eat World, The Get Up Kids and Dashboard Confessional were swaying teens to their introspective sides.

The album showcases a blending of instruments in a such a manner that the tracks demand to be taken in as a whole instead of being picked apart by stifling guitar solos and withering drum fills, with vocalist Blair Shehan adding his smooth voice to the blend.

The track “Beautiful Morning” opens the album with a softly strumming wall of guitars intermixed with a heavier and fuzzed bass line and rhythm that relies on a simple, clean-is-more ethic.

From there the album moves onto “Change You,” a slightly more up-tempo track that shows the drums leading while the rest of the instruments fall in line and Shehan’s voice fills in any sonic spaces left. The choral harmonization in the pre-chorus is a nice added touch, showing more of the bands tendency to not overload the listener, while adding a general rising effect to the crescendo that is the chorus.

The emo feel of the band really comes into the fore with the third track “Promises of the West,” where Pedro Benito and Shehan’s guitars move from soft picking to the more common wall of sound approach heard in many of the tracks. The lyrics here adhere to an emo feel with such phrases as “vibrations of its loneliness” in reference to forlorn love songs that set the mood and attitude of the track to a slightly desperate and melancholic state. This track is therefore most likely the best of an already pleasing assortment, hard as it is to single out any one earth-shatteringly fantastic track from the others.

The next few tracks show more of the same: straightforward emotion-tinged indie rock with simple yet effective structure around the two guitars, bass and drums with the occasional bell or whistle, but nothing that overwhelms the listener with anything more than a desire to close their eyes and nod along.

It is not until the eighth track “Perfect Timing,” that the vibe and intelligence of “Promises of the West” meets its match. The music is more upbeat and slightly harder on this track but do much to add a little variety to the album.

From there, the album clips along with the same aesthetically pleasing sounds from the middle tracks and keeping the listener nodding along. In “A Gentle Reminder” one is gently reminded of the difference in tracks by novel echoed reverberations of guitar that poke the listener to alertness and by Shehan’s lyrical image work such as “Beneath this canopy of trees, I wrap my arms around my knees and rocking gently back to sleep, as I collapse into the deep,” or “At this swollen riverbank, you tried to cross but you sank like a stone, you’re breaking your back to be alone.”

The album ends with “Waiting for Your Arrival” which speaks to a long-awaited reunion of sorts that also alludes to an end of times. Lyrics temper the mellow music—interspersed as it is with a slight synthesizer— with a reckless happiness, creating a pleasing end to a pleasingly simple album.

Such an album, as heavily frosted as it is with Shehan’s imagination-evoking lyrics and the wonderfully understated musicianship of his fellow band members, is perfect for an introspective car ride or a study session in a coffee shop via one’s ear buds. While it does not contain any great leap in style or variety of sound, it is just so simply good and nice to listen to that it needs no sonic flourishes or bombastic anthems.

Advocate Staff