Simply (Un)Complicated
Complication can often be a feature as opposed to a bug. I typically expect to be challenged, at least a little, by any piece of art I spend time with. When the challenge isn’t there, I sometimes write off the art as lazy, or under-developed, or just plain bad. Give me a visionary sociopolitical screed that showcases Thom Yorke hitting high-C while riding a wave of analog synths that mirror virtuosic guitar over a reversed drum beat and panned basslines: give me difficult, give me meaty, give me impossible beauty or grotesquerie (or both!) as a product of endless tinkering and studio trickery.
These predilections in my listening make it difficult to explain why it is that I love a good pop song. (For disambiguation, let's stipulate "pop" as music with typical structure, instrumentation, and vocal style. I don't necessarily mean "pop" in the sense of “mainstream" or “manufactured”, though what I'm talking about often ends up there for better or for worse.)
Because I can't sit here and explain what it is I love about simple, clean, unchallenging pop music, it becomes incumbent on me to offer evidence - and Tobias Jesso Jr.’s 2015 album Goon has continued to prove itself a prime example of the kind of pop music that I love: it comes fully assembled right out of the box with piano-heavy balladry, homespun yearning, and an authentically shaky vocal style.
Jesso Jr. slots easily into the pop singer-songwriter songbook alongside such stalwarts as Paul Simon, Ben Kweller, Todd Rundgren, Tom Waits (thematically and in its use of LA settings) and many others. Indeed, much of the pleasure in this album's 45 minutes of easy listening can be had in parsing the little homages and similarities to other acts: an intro that vaguely recalls Illinois-era Sufjan Stevens ("Can't Stop Thinking About You"), the MoTown swing of "Leaving Los Angeles", the Billy-Joel-in-a-wine-bottle fatalism of "Hollywood" (which bears a dourness that recalls the Piano Man’s "New York State of Mind"), the Dylan-goes-Urban-Outfitters naïveté of "Tell The Truth", etc. But in no way does Jesso Jr.’s pensiveness sound unoriginal - if anything, his reverence to what's come before is an endearing idiosyncrasy in a culture where novelty can sometimes be perceived as good for its own sake.
The interplay of the instruments is stellar throughout, at several points I find myself unexpectedly recalling the modern legend Jon Brion's musical contributions to one of my favorite films, I Heart Huckabees - it is similarly LA-based and -inspired, and it captures the same sense of the banal becoming the surreal and then looping back around again to banal. In a way, the film explains something about my counter-intuitive love for simple pop songs: characters endeavor to assign existential meaning to things that are simply normal and everyday, finally realizing that the normal and everyday doesn't have to be meaningless - the meaning comes from you and your experience of the thing itself (“Do not call it ‘the ball thing.’ Call it ‘pure being.’”).
Looked at another way, pop songs appeal to me when they can be imbued with extra layers and turned into screeds that are a bit more evocative and complicated than they initially appear. Goon makes its hay off of exactly these types of permutations but also is simply an easy, if uncompromisingly wistful listen. Jesso Jr. doesn’t overthink things too much, and it suits the collection admirably.
In another timeline, we may have had two or three follow-up’s to Goon by now, each with its own personality and uniqueness but carrying with them Jesso Jr.’s ability to relate on real and impactful levels through a conversational open-mic lyrical openness. Alas, we live in the reality we are dealt and not the one we want. Luckily Goon is more than enough when a bit of commiseration and loveliness are needed, and it only gets better with each listen. So I’ll take it, and I’ll be happy with it.
(**Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in a blog a few years ago. I can’t even find that blog anymore though it may still be out there (?). Regardless, I thought this review deserved a new lease on life here on Re-Critic. Some alterations have been made from the original to improve phrasings and update as needed.**)
