Posts Tagged ‘Young Jesus’

YOUNG JESUS – ” Shepherd Head “

Posted: September 10, 2022 in MUSIC
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Young Jesus, is brainchild of Chicago born, now Los Angeles based singer/songwriter John Rossiter, has long been a difficult band to describe, and on its forthcoming sixth album Shepherd Head, the project’s sonic tent is bigger than ever. Rossiter explains in press notes that while recording the Welcome to Conceptual Beach follow-up on his MacBook, he incorporated everything from nearby dog howls and voice memo mistakes to flowing rivers and singing strangers: “Whatever wanted to be in came in.” This inherent embrace of the world that birthed it imbues Shepherd Head with an abundant sense of peace.

Even for a band that has shapeshifted throughout its history, “Shepherd Head” feels like a departure for Young Jesus. After completing the mathy, jazzy epic “Welcome to Conceptual Beach” in 2020, the band were burnt out, and lead John Rossiter decided to take a different tack. Working primarily alone, armed with a Macbook, a microphone and a newfound patience, he began to piece together songs from found sounds, audio recordings and white noise. The result is, at least stylistically, a glimpse at Young Jesus in a different form—a stripped-back singer-songwriter approach wrapped in meditative electronic pop, more interested in the emotional, or even spiritual, than the cerebral.

It’s a record which faces up to fear and grief but somehow feels suffused with hope, a personal, quasi-solo record that feels anything but lonely (with cameos from friends dotted throughout, including collaborations with Tomberlin and Arswain). As we wrote in a preview of lead single ‘Ocean’ back in the summer, “Shepherd Head” is “a tapestry both vulnerable and tender, where great loss and transcendence are not so different after all.”

The lead single “Ocean,” featuring not only Tomberlin, but also former Young Jesus members Marcel Borbón Peréz and Peter Martinez (the band’s original drummer), “There’s a sense of cosmic scope to the track, as well as everyday earthliness (Rossiter layers footsteps and leaves crunching into the track as texture), but what ultimately pervades it most is a sense of preternatural calm. ‘Go / Give your life unto the weave / To the fabric and the seam / To the drift of what you’ll be,’ Rossiter and Tomberlin urge, as if in worship of the unseen forces that govern all, not in spite of their unknowability, but because of it.” Rossiter himself all but disappears into these songs, as if channelling something far larger than himself—than any one of us. 

YOUNG JESUS – ” Magicians “

Posted: August 17, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Los Angeles-based band Young Jesus have shared their new album, “Welcome to Conceptual Beach”, which follows 2018’s The Whole Thing Is Just There. They do a lot with just seven tracks their improvisational jams span jazz, math rock and haunting folk-rock, but nothing is set in stone. It’s blissfully conscious and unconscious, and at times, they sound more like conjurers than musicians. Their abstract, impressionistic lyrics heighten the beautiful recklessness of their music. Young Jesus met at Pea Soup Andersons and the rest is history.

Imagine a shoreline alone, carved from the continent, without land or water to border it, a rind of possibility, a moon-coloured border between land and sea, knowing and unknowing. This is Conceptual Beach, a place John Rossiter, vocalist/guitarist of Los Angeles-based Young Jesus, describes as his long-time mental refuge, where he imagines himself living. Their new album, Welcome to Conceptual Beach, first took form as a physical zine in 2016, when the four members of the band were on their first tour together. At that time, it was still somewhere Rossiter inhabited alone, protective of his solitude. Now, he is allowing others to join him there. “The reason it’s called Welcome to… [Conceptual Beach] is because I’m inviting other inner landscapes into it,” Rossiter explains as he describes the transformation of the beach’s terrain into a whole varied emotional world.

Coming in at over 10 minutes, “Magicians” is the latest single off of “Welcome to Conceptual Beach”, the newest Young Jesus album, out next week via Saddle Creek Records. “Magicians” acts as the larger than life closer for Welcome to Conceptual Beach, an album based on, well, the conceptual beach that is the mental escape of frontman John Rossiter.

“Faith,” the opening track, runs parallel to the album as a whole: dynamic and groovy and psychedelic and emotional. Each musician has a moment to shine and to speak. Opening with Kern’s version of the Purdie Shuffle, to Marcel’s polyrhythmic bass, to Eric’s organ solo, and held together by John’s whispered prayer that, “we just might grow,” Young Jesus offer a music uniquely in service to emotion. “(un)knowing” is a “meditation celebration,” a song about the confusion and pain of re-examining a life—of committing to a life of experience and curiosity. Mixing the spirit and experimentation of OK Computer with the sincerity of Bon Iver, “Root and Crown” is the first song that offers a way out of the traps and patterns of a life. A commitment to grieving, listening, and growing. A devotion to spring, sung from the depths of winter.

Young Jesus previously released two other singles from the album: “Root And Crown” and “(un)knowing.” Welcome to Conceptual Beach follows their 2018 release The Whole Thing Is Just There. The band also features bassist Marcel Borbon, keyboardist Eric Shevrin, and drummer Kern Haug. 

On Welcome to Conceptual Beach, Young Jesus pries our sobs from parentheticals and wields them with a brutal but tender force. They take these elements and translate them into a spacious ground for growth, for ourselves, our communities, our world. They affirm that change starts with how we reckon with ourselves as individuals, that we are all magicians, as the closing track of Welcome to Conceptual Beach suggests, “making love and doing dishes,” capable of conjuring new worlds for ourselves, and to live in others’.

Release Date: August 14th, 2020

Band Members
John Rossiter (Guitar/Vox)
Kern Haug (Drums)
Marcel Borbon (Bass)
Eric Shevrin (Keys/Vox)

YOUNG JESUS – ” Fourth Zone of Gaits “

Posted: December 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Young Jesus have shared the video for “Fourth Zone of Gaits,” off their most recent release, The Whole Thing is Just There, out now through Saddle Creek Records. “Fourth Zone of Gaits” feels like an extension of that philosophy. Its guitar chords come in broad, sweeping brushstrokes, Rossiter’s vocals warbling on the edge of revelation. The feeling of motion and stasis informed the creation of the video, directed by Peter Nichols, as well. “None of us surf but we talked about waves a lot,” the band explain in a statement. “Light waves, radio waves, sound waves, the fact that matter exists as both particles and waves. Maybe God is a harp player that invented physics. This is what’s going on in the video.”

Young Jesus – Fourth Zone of Gaits Directed and Animated by Peter Nichols From the album The Whole Thing is Just There – Out 10/12/18

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YOUNG JESUS – ” Milo “

Posted: October 29, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Young Jesus

The initially Chicago-based indie rock band Young Jesus released their debut album Home in 2012, and were basically ready to break up not long after that until frontman John Rossiter moved to LA and ended up writing its followup. He says the album is “the product of one of those heavy moments of confusion and depression,” adding, “Essentially, I thought I knew a lot, I realized I knew nothing. Classic angst.”
Home’s followup is called Grow / Decompose, and is out via Hellhole Supermarket . That’s the artwork above, with a picture of Rossiter in drag as one of the album’s main characters, Neil. Three tracks from the new album have been released so far, and a fourth called “Milo” makes its premiere in this post. “Milo” has roots in ’90s slowcore and early ’00s home-recorded indie, and it’s propelled by the kind of anthemic melody that feels instantly familiar without sounding like anything in particular.

“Gulf” will appeal to fans of Built To Spill and/or people looking to fill 20 whole minutes with glacial emo music.

Young Jesus – Gulf From the album The Whole Thing is Just There – Out Now!

YOUNG JESUS – ” The Whole Thing Is Just There “

Posted: October 12, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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In the 1980 documentary Philip Guston: A Life Lived, the famed neo-expressionist talks about a painting he keeps starting over: “What I’m always seeking is some great simplicity where the whole thing is just there,” he says. This pursuit is what drives Young Jesus on their new record The Whole Thing Is Just There. Young Jesus combines a palette of indie rock instrumentation with a spirit of unhindered spontaneity to construct – and deconstruct – sonic landscapes. With soaring melodies, spiraling polyrhythms, free-wheeling improvisation, and a raw, stirring vocal performance from John Rossiter, The Whole Thing Is Just There is both prismatic and resolute – the sound of four individuals in pursuit of a common goal: To glimpse what’s just beyond.

“That feeling you pursue when you’re creating, when the world is opening up and things are on the cusp of beauty and revelation, but it’s just out of reach—that to me, is the ideal feeling of existing,” says John Rossiter, singer and guitarist of the LA-based art rock quartet Young Jesus. “And to maintain that in the face of depressing or difficult stuff—that’s what I’d like to be able to do.” This pursuit is what drives Young Jesus, and is what’s documented on their upcoming record The Whole Thing Is Just There.

On The Whole Thing, Young Jesus combine a palette of indie rock instrumentation with a spirit of unhindered spontaneity to construct—and deconstruct—emotionally potent and inventive sonic landscapes.

A Chicago transplant, Rossiter’s distinct songwriting approach is informed in part by the city’s emo and post-rock traditions. But since his move to Los Angeles in 2013, his bandmates—experimentally-minded keyboardist Eric Shevrin, bassist/composer Marcel Borbon, and jazz-head drummer Kern Haug—have all brought their tastes to bear on the band’s sonic identity.

Imbued with a sense of both desperation and discovery, each track unfolds like a deep sea voyage: beginning on the familiar ground of a conventional song structure before setting sail for the open waters of instrumental experimentation and plumbing the depths of the unknown in search of some conceptual treasure before heading back to port.

With soaring melodies, spiraling polyrhythms, free-wheeling improvisation, and a raw, stirring vocal performance from Rossiter, The Whole Thing Is Just Thereis both prismatic and resolute—the sound of four individuals in pursuit of a common goal: to glimpse what’s just beyond.

Limited-edition of 150 copies on yellow vinyl exclusive to the Saddle Creek Store.
“The most adventurous band in indie rock” – Uproxx
” a part-improvised mini-masterpiece.” – Noisey
“It’s good stuff, and it’s the kind of heady indie rock song that you don’t hear enough of these days.” – Brooklyn Vegan
“Freed from the conventional post-punk, Young Jesus truly earn the title of ‘composers,’ refashioning the tools of rock music as transportive devices” – Pitchfork

YOUNG JESUS – ” Feeling “

Posted: November 15, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Young Jesus, are a indie rock band born in Chicago and now residing in Los Angeles, they have just signed with Saddle Creek Records with an album release due February 2018. Their lead single is nearly 10 minute track that wanders all over the place. Herre’s a little something about the band.

Young Jesus, looks to communicate the tensions between proximity and distance, chaos and order. On their upcoming debut record S/T, released by Saddle Creek, the band focuses on seemingly small moments in everyday life: phone calls with Mom, landscapes along the highway, crows in a tree. Yet with time these strange intimacies add up to a life. A life full of anxiety, confusion, sadness, joy, boredom, and ultimately wonder.

Band Members
John Rossiter (Guitar/Vox)
Kern Haug (Drums)
Marcel Borbon (Bass)
Eric Shevrin (Keys/Vox)