Jesse & The Spirit – cloudspotting
It’s both hard to believe and easy to envision Jesse & The Spirit (aka Jesse James) being around for more than a decade. With multiple acclaimed projects to their name (including the one we’re focusing on in this review, Jesse & The Spirit; sludge-gaze band Dolly Sods; freaked-out electronica act The Niagara River; and even their pre-pandemic post-rock bliss-out in Tomoreaux), they’re approaching, or has, by default, already achieved Buffalo indie rock royalty. James’ latest album is called cloudspotting, James’ umpteenth release, but one that feels anchored in multiple ways. Distinctly Buffalonian (we’ll get to that in a minute), cloudspotting not only chronicles James’ return to Buffalo, but also happens to host James’ 100th original J&TS song. 100 songs is nothing to sneeze at, especially for a prolific songwriter like James, who has split songwriting duties in so many bands throughout the years.
James’ approach for Jesse & The Spirit releases has always been purposely lo-fi. There’s a freedom that comes along with putting music out with bedroom-recording quality, and in this case, it suits their airy songwriting perfectly. “Loss Highway” is propelled by a canned drumbeat – that beat’s electronic perfection offsets the rest of the music’s humanity in a poignant way. Constant bass plucking keeps a backbone while guitars swirl and sparkle in the background. James’ voice is a breathy grumble – “float down Ferry, east toward Bailey… float down Richmond, south toward Allen.” Directions every Buffalo-bred twenty something has mindlessly wandered a hundred times, but here, it feels like a return to form, or a flashback to better (or worse times). James keeps the same drum machine flowing into song three, “evening drive I-86.” The guitars here are distinctly more crunchy and they hammer out a rhythm that’s as wry as it is catchy. “blue sky drum” splits the difference between these two. A clear album highlight and an excellent vehicle for James’ more melodic sound, you’ll notice that it’s driven by that same, weirdly-perfect drum machine.
Elsewhere, J&TS dives into psychedelic sounds – droning basslines, single-note chord progressions, and swelling sounds juxtaposed against the more traditional bedroom-pop. “three parks” is a vibe and a half, in another world this could be a song on Jagged Little Pill or some other mid-90s jam-out, but instead it’s a warm, if ominous, centerpiece here. Its sister song, so to speak, is the equally drone-y “overlook, now,” which has me with my own pair of rose-colored glasses on. How come it’s always so hard to recognize when the “good times” are actually happening?
J&TS can’t help but getting at least a little weird on cloudspotting (see “Acadia” or the appropriately named “summertime gloom”), but James’ 100th song, “days park” is absolutely worth a listen. Written over the course of the last ten years, James’ borderline Sprechgesang spills out a decade’s worth of excitement, heartbreak, joy, and ennui (and everything else in between). This is a ten minute long expulsion of pride, trauma, and a genuine desire to root yourself somewhere sacred. I have my own complicated relationship with “days park,” and when James sings “lost something i had back then / ecstatic momentary lens / i relearn three lessons in a cycle all my life,” it’s a reminder that we’re all grasping at straws in our own little corner of this Earth… And that sometimes, we’re all brought together by the shared experiences at Nietzsche’s, DBGBs, or whatever other shitty dive bar you found your way into after making some questionable decisions in Days Park.
You can listen to cloudspotting via bandcamp (embedded below), or, on Spotify and/or Apple Music.
Categorised in: Album of the Week
This post was written by Nick Sessanna