Local Spotlight consciousness, but even this style is short-lived. Track three surprises with eighties heavy synth and shoegazey vocals. The next relies on keyboard melody and understated Morrisey lyrics, and the rest similarly refuse to follow any discernible thematic link. This is not to say that the EP feels disjointed (although the introduction of auto-tune in “Pick Your Brain” was a bit too far afield for my taste), Jamboree’s ability to showcase their JAMBOREE diversity while preserving a pleasing ROOM flow is a talent unto itself. In a short 20 minutes Room exposes the spectrum In an age where music is engineered of sounds that the band has to make to ensure at least thirty seconds of use of. It is an impressive range fitting playtime – the necessary amount to be for the extensive catalogue they have paid out through Spotify – beginning released over the last couple of years, an album (even an EP) with a spoken and I look forward to watching their word track is risky, yet Jamboree’s growth and promising future. Mark Room pulls it off with unflinching Teague confidence. “Distance” opens with an upbeat drum and bass hook that leads directly into monotone prose-poetry exploring notions of malaise, loneliness, and anxiety which foreshadow the motifs that ground the rest of the album. It is difficult to maintain reasonable expectations when an album starts like this. Six songs of droning vocals make for a listening experience that isn’t exactly engaging, but the rest of Room turns out to be a string of denied expectations, and nothing if BASEBALL HERO not sonically diverse. Throughout the SALVATION MOUNTAIN next five songs, Jamboree eschews many major genre classifications and I don’t think any new, quarantine pulls influence from a range of bands released music has made me as spanning decades. The second track nostalgic for late nights spent dancing “Change” is a nineties power-pop than this EP. I can close my eyes and powerhouse akin to early Weezer, see myself, dancing, arms wrapped discussing the discomfort of self- around my friends, smiling. Baseball
Hero has brought me back to a time I had almost forgotten and I couldn’t be happier about it. Baseball Hero released their newest EP, Salvation Mountain, on September 2nd, 2020. The EP is really beautiful. It is named after the infamous “Salvation Mountain” in Slab City, Southern California, with a photograph of the iconic art piece as the album art. The album is a mixture of happy and sad music that could emanate from the Mountain. It’s the perfect accompaniment to this weird period of endless quarantine. The songs are a space for venting, as well as finding new peace and normalcy despite the limitations of our new world. It feels like the art we all needed that expresses how we feel being isolated from each other all over. Most of the songs start slow and gentle with really soft vocals, then eventually get loud and rowdy. The instruments clash and collide symbiotically. It works as carefully orchestrated and intertwined chaos. It feels like the inner screams and turmoils of a quarantine day. A day that starts out normal and easy, then clashes and collides, and then carries on and moves wonderfully. The songs are nostalgic, sad, dreamy, a mix of reality and inner turmoil, all while being very fast and irresistibly danceable. The longest song on the album, “Modern Death/Wish it Was” seems to speak on this new adjustment we are dealing with. A new reconfiguriguration of life as we know it. The song works wonderfully for small scale life changes, as well the mass changes we are seeing today. The lyrics preach for escaping, “when I was
a little kid I dreamt I could climb a set of stairs into the sky,” with the intense, fast paced instrumentals. The song ends with what may be the mantra of 2020, “Lean into the feeling that nothing is the same, though I wish it was.” The song ends with an echoing of “I wish it was”. It feels sad but relieving in the optimism and upbeat style of the instruments. The song and the lyrics are cathartic, as they are a conjuring and release of the overbearing stress and panic of the times. The album’s title track is a wonderful coming together of forces that switch from loud to mellow. It leaves the listeners swaying slowly to suddenly flailing. It’s a beautiful song, with the lyrics, “Let’s gather on Salvation Mountain, Before the Rapture takes us.” The song is a wonderfully joyous call for coming together in these especially apocalyptic times. The song, and the album completely, reminds us of the silver linings, the happiness underlying the bleakness of the times. Baseball Hero’s new EP is exceptionally poignant and a great quarantine listen. It’s sure to parallel some of your own anxieties. It might even make you feel some sense of transcendence from the uncertainties of the future. Hopefully, one day soon, we can all be gathered again in a dark room to hear this album live and loud. There won’t be a dancing restriction and we can move and sway together, rejoicing, singing along to “Salvation Mountain”. Lily O’Donnell
KAINA (pronounced Kah-e-na), is an exploration into the struggles the artist has faced growing up as a firstgeneration Latina, born and raised in the United States. Her Venezuelan and Guatemalan background influences not only her musical styles but also her lyrics, which are honest and hopeful, keeping the listener open to the reality of her life experience throughout. KAINA’s previous EP releases, Sweet ASL in 2016 and 4U in 2018 were KAINA musically similar but did not have the NEXT TO THE SUN same openness lurking in the lyrics. Compared to Next To The Sun, those Next To The Sun, the latest release EPs feel like the artist was just dipping from Chicago-based musician her toes in the water to see who was
listening before really opening up about who she is. The album starts with “House.” The track builds gradually, using different reverbs and effects, putting the listener in a trance of anticipation before a single word has been sung. We hear a voice humming, inviting us to come closer. Finally, an ethereal voice invites the listener to know her struggles. The opening line “You with your walls, you’re so proud / You stay so happy keeping all us out” is such a poignant first hand account of what so many people feel not just in the U.S., but universally. “All this divide, it ain’t so healthy / There’s room for plenty,”
she summarizes in the chorus. The song sets the tone for the album in its honesty, but it also sets the listener up to know the lyrics are going to be introspective. My stand-outs on the album are “What’s A Girl” (delivered in a style reminiscent of Fiona Apple) and “Joei,” which opens with a conversation between (presumably) KAINA and a child about having a crush on someone and keeping it a secret if they don’t feel the same way before KAINA’s voice asks “Am I a secret?” I love the perspective shift from the secret keeper to the sudden realization that all of us could be someone else’s secret. The
Ulteriors
14 Stylus Magazine October / November 2020
