{"id":21343,"date":"2021-07-30T05:30:34","date_gmt":"2021-07-30T09:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=21343"},"modified":"2021-07-21T12:35:19","modified_gmt":"2021-07-21T16:35:19","slug":"the-jenny-thing-still-indie-after-all-these-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/07\/30\/the-jenny-thing-still-indie-after-all-these-years\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jenny Thing: Still Indie After All These Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Jenny Thing returns, and things are different<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

Thanks in no small part to upstart record labels like San Francisco\u2019s own 415 Records \u2014 home to The Red Rockers, Romeo Void, Translator and Wire Train \u2014 the alternative or \u201ccollege rock\u201d sound was an important part of the musical landscape of the late 1980s. And while Berkeley-based group The Jenny Thing wasn\u2019t on 415, their sound built upon the sounds of that moody (and sometimes jangly) style.<\/p>\n

The group\u00a0\u2014 Matt Easton, Shyam Rao, Ehren Becker, and Mike Phillips \u2014 released a pair of inspired albums in the mid-\u201990s. They played a high-profile gig at San Francisco Pride\u2019s 25th anniversary celebration. Then they stopped performing live, surfacing again in 1999 to release the highly-regarded Nowhere Near You<\/i>. And then they disappeared.<\/p>\n

But after an absence of more than two decades, The Jenny Thing have returned. And they\u2019ve brought along a brand-new album, American Canyon<\/i>, out June 18.<\/p>\n

Matt Easton explains where the group has been. \u201cYou kind of want to say, \u2018Well, you know, we never really<\/i> broke up,\u2019\u201d he says with a chuckle. But the truth is that he and his four bandmates grew up. \u201cWe were active \u2014 over-active, even \u2014 as teenagers, 20- and 21-year-olds. And as we reached the beginning of adulthood, we moved on.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says that in the old days, The Jenny Thing was \u201ca van band. We were good, and on a good night it felt like more than the sum of its parts.\u201d There was no dramatic falling out; the band just quietly\u2026 went quiet. The four members stayed in touch, and maintained their friendships. But Rao went to medical school, and Phillips relocated for a time to San Diego. For his part, after a 2001 solo release, Easton found that he didn\u2019t have the drive to make music the way he had done before.<\/p>\n

But by 2015, the members of the band all found themselves back in or near the Bay Area. \u201cWe did a little bit of hanging out, a little bit of band stuff,\u201d Easton says. And the spark that had fired their earlier collective efforts showed signs of returning. From there, they found their friendships deepening, developing in a way that their 20-year-old selves might not have found possible.<\/p>\n

In some ways, The 2021 edition of The Jenny Thing picks up right about where Nowhere Near You<\/i> left off. As pleasing as their first two albums had been, Nowhere Near You<\/i> seemed to signal the band truly coming into its own, with a sound more individualistic and distinctive, less informed by The Cure, The Smiths and other UK alt-rock acts.<\/p>\n

And belatedly, American Canyon<\/i> continues that development. It certainly helped that Rao had moved closer to where Easton lives; the band\u2019s primary songwriting team could once again work together in a practical manner. But time does change some things: The group has now set aside the traditional four-piece rock band setup (\u201cthe singer plays the easy guitar, the good guitar player plays the hard guitar, and the bass player and the drummer do the same thing on most songs,\u201d Easton explains) in favor of something more fluid.<\/p>\n

That approach \u2014 coupled with the time away from band-focused activity \u2014 has had a creatively liberating effect on the four musicians. \u201cOur lack of participation really untethered us from all the expectations that we had for ourselves,\u201d Easton admits. \u201cWe had so much distance from ourselves as \u2018consumed\u2019 artists that we were really, really free in making this record.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nominally a guitar-based band in that traditional mode, on some American Canyon<\/i> tracks \u2014 like the title song \u2014 guitars aren\u2019t even used. \u201cIt\u2019s bluesier and heavier than anything [else] we\u2019ve done,\u201d Easton says. \u201cAnd it was all written in like 30 minutes.\u201d He says that when he and Rao realized what they had created with that track, the future became clear: \u201cIt was like, \u2018Oh, this is taking us somewhere,\u201d he recalls thinking. \u201c\u2019This doesn\u2019t suck. We better make a record!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That was in 2018. Work continued on the album, sometimes in-person, other times remotely. Most of American Canyon<\/i> was done before the world hit pause in mid-March of last year. Easton replaced the scratch vocal tracks with new ones, and once seven songs were finished, he discovered that he wanted one more. \u201cThere was this moment when I realized, \u2018This is going to see the world,\u2019\u201d Easton says. Citing the example of Tears for Fears\u2019 Songs from the Big Chair<\/i>, he says, \u201cI\u2019ve always felt that eight songs can be a meaningful album, if they\u2019re the right<\/i> eight songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Easton appreciates pop values, and one of those is brevity. American Canyon<\/i> clocks in at under 30 minutes, but not because The Jenny Thing lacked more good material. \u201cI respect the form,\u201d he says, \u201cand for me, the form is four minutes. You can go plus or minus 20 percent and, after that, it\u2019s like, \u2018Why?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But when there\u2019s a good answer to that why<\/i> question, Easton isn\u2019t afraid to go long. A centerpiece track that nonetheless closes the album, \u201cWaiting for the Knife\u201d is an example of the songwriter sticking his neck out. \u201cIt has a sense of both repetition and \u2018cyclicality\u2019 that takes you into these sort of higher highs,\u201d he observes. \u201cAnd then there\u2019s almost like a pullout shot. The end is supposed to [feel] like a crane shot off a planet or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it does feel that way. The song even features a slight return a la The Beatles\u2019 \u201cI am the Walrus.\u201d But Easton doesn\u2019t seek to be too arty. \u201cTypically,\u201d he laughs, \u201cwe\u2019re really happy with the three-and-a-half-minute song.\u201d Part of the album\u2019s success is its musical balancing act: though he characterizes himself as a disciplined lyricist, Easton\u2019s singing is a different story. \u201cIt sounds like someone who\u2019s a pretty good singer,\u201d he says, \u201cstruggling against basic limitations with a lot of earnestness and a little bit of a wink.\u201d Sort of the approach employed by those entering midlife.<\/p>\n

Easton returns to the subject that kicked off our discussion: \u201cSo why did The Jenny Thing actually come back together? Because we took steps toward each other, and \u2014 all of a sudden \u2014 the results got good,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s why.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Jenny Thing returns, and things are different Thanks in no small part to upstart record labels like San Francisco\u2019s own 415 Records \u2014 home to The Red Rockers, Romeo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,49,62],"tags":[4602],"class_list":["post-21343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-new-release","category-rawk","tag-the-jenny-thing","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21343"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21346,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21343\/revisions\/21346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}