Some albums are so slickly produced that there’s not a note out of place, everything filtered and leveled and over-engineered until there’s no real passion left in it, all the energy drained out of it and replaced with an overly-glossy sheen of artificiality.
This is why it’s a delight to find there’s a deliciously raw edge to Jagged City‘s debut EP There Are More of Us, Always. This EP sounds less like a studio album and more like a session that’s been recorded and released instead. There’s a subtle echo to the instruments, like you’d find in a recording made in a practice room, but that’s not to suggest that anything here feels rough or amateurish. There’s a sublime display of musical talent on display here from the bass of Carlos Torres, former touring member of post-rock icons Explosions in the Sky, the guitar of Defeater’s Jake Woodruff, and the drumming and production talent of Urian Hackney. The album also features MONO‘s Takaakira Goto as a guest guitarist on the closing track, parentheses and all, ‘(Deluge in a Paper Cup)’.
It’s honestly all the more impressive when you consider the somewhat piecemeal process that was this EP’s creation. That bane of adults everywhere, scheduling, led to Urian taking on production and engineering duties as well as performing the drum parts. Over the space of two days, Jake and Urian recorded the core of the EP at a studio in Vermont while Carlos recorded his bass parts in in Los Angeles alongside Explosion in the Sky‘s Michael James. Jake then added further guitar parts from his home studio before the whole thing was assembled and unleashed on the listening public. You certainly wouldn’t suspect any of that when you listen to it, with every part sounding like it was recorded in the same room as everyone played together.
Clocking in at a brisk 19 minutes and change There Are More of Us, Always is a beautiful little snapshot of what this band is capable of, with tracks that veer from ethereal, thoughtful pieces like ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ that soothe the listener’s wearied brow before the crashing cymbals and frantically hammered guitars of ‘Rain and Sirens’ jolt you back to reality. There’s even a sprinkling of some goth-style guitar reminiscent of the 1980’s goth scene for those of us who were alive and clubbing back then.
The ending of There Are More of Us, Always is as abrupt as it is bittersweet. There’s no triumphant crash ending, no slow fadeout. The music just…stops and leaves the listening craving more. There’s no 19 minute Tool-esque epics here. No grand, sweeping soundscapes or impressively technical guitar sections. There’s just raw emotion and musical passion. Jake himself commented that the band’s single ‘Imaginary Lines’ is “a meditation on how all lines are imaginary, all borders are fake, all classifications are arbitrary, all divisions aren’t real.” It’s a reminder that music is a shared experience, meant to draw us all together while the world seems determined to drive us apart and enforce ever more arbitrary divisions. It’s a beautiful sentiment for a heartfelt EP that’s definitely worth a place in your collection.