Jared Mees - If You Wanna Swim with the Sharks…
Tracklist:
- Suicide Squeeze
- Him Her You Me
- Loboito
- Cockleburs & Hay
- Moonlight & Timing
- Panama Anthem
- Live Fiction
- Sodom & Glendora
- Working & Drinking
- The Strange Demise of Jerome Nobles
- It's in the Way (Come Clean)
- Julai Throwback
Every once in a while—and it’s rare anymore given the sheer amount of music information that floods in and out of my consciousness on a daily basis—an album comes along that stuns with its simplicity. The material may not be the most original or innovative, but it strikes a chord and gets under my skin with melodies that are hard to forget.
If You Wanna Swim with the Sharks… is one such album. Cut from the same cloth that gave us both alt-country and Elephant 6, the self-produced debut by singer-songwriter Jared Mees revisits well-worn territory, but charms the listener just the same.
Acoustic guitar, lo-fi drums and angst-tinged lyrics open the album with “Suicide Squeeze” (a slight misstep), but don’t get bogged down by the Bright Eyes-esque mystique; “Him Her You Me” follows soon after and picks up the pace with a more edgy rhythm and more confrontational ideas (“count up the ways that you can believe in a god who / doesn’t seem to believe much in you / was living but already died”).
The range of influences and musicianship continues to evolve through the album’s twelve songs, and while the territory explored can often be described in terms of other bands (Cake, Pavement, Built to Spill, The Shins), the sound is impressively accomplished for such a small-scale release. Moments throughout demonstrate that there is more to the man than the sum of his influences; the lovely male/female duet of “Moonlight & Timing” exhibit a delicate tenderness uncommon in most releases, and the aggressive, rollicking drive of “Sodom & Glendora” boils over with a cocksure swagger fit for a rock god.
Sure, it’s simple stuff that will likely slip under the radar of most reviewers this year, but the artistry here cannot be denied. Between Mees’ knack for melody and his variegated musicality, If You Wanna Swim with the Sharks… is a hidden gem that demands to be discovered.
Buy If You Wanna Swim with the Sharks… from Tender Loving Empire.
MP3:
Sodom & Glendora
Loboito
Panama Anthem