My new album “Hypnophobia” is coming out on may 4th (5th in the US) and here’s the new single “Find Yourself”. Jacco Gardner is from Zwaag, in the Netherlands. Gardner was born in the late 80s but sounds as though he came of age in the late 60s. It’s a very specific stylised 60s that he evokes on his debut album, “Cabinet of Curiosities”: the ornate, lushly orchestrated, psych-inflected “soft rock” or “baroque pop” of British groups such as Nirvana and the Zombies, and American bands such as the Millennium and Sagittarius.
These are the models for this 24-year-old from the Netherlands: as Gardner explains, those “mostly studio projects where the songwriter or artist also took over the role of producer and could really start experimenting and work out everything they could think of themselves. Important artists/producers in this genre would be Curt Boettcher, Billy Nicholls, Syd-era Pink Floyd, the Zombies, Brian Wilson and Love.” Gardner recorded and engineered Cabinet of Curiosities at his Shadow Shoppe Studio in Holland, playing every instrument himself save the drums, having mastered recorder, clarinet, bass, guitar, keyboards and violin as a child. As an adult he also appears to have got to grips with the harpsichord, mellotron, flute and organ, because they’re all part of his chamber-pop palette.
He hasn’t just got the instrumentation and overall sound right, using all the right analogue equipment. He’s got the right voice as well, Expect charming chord sequences and unexpected key changes, and don’t be surprised when things take a turn for the melancholy, even sinister.
The Fat Angel Sings 