Your Majesty: A Brief Review Of The New Album From J. Robbins (Jawbox, Office Of Future Plans, Channels)
The new album from J. Robbins is just fantastic. Close in tone and style to his work with his wife, Janet Morgan, in the excellent Channels, Un-becoming, out this Friday from Dischord Records, is a superb release, and one that's full of wildly-tuneful blasts of power-pop and art-rock. That so much sounds so little like the songs that Robbins made famous with Jawbox is interesting, Robbins here favoring a nearly-mainstream level of accessibility. Still, for those of us who were already fans of Channels and Office of Future Plans, the music on Un-becoming will feel quite familiar. The release is, frankly,the closest thing to the kind of big alt-rock album that J. Robbins always seemed to be on the verge of making. And to acknowledge that is not to say that this is not harDCore enough but, rather, that Dave Grohl better watch his back.
"Soldier On" and "Your Majesty" are direct and catchy, the sort of tunes that are very nearly closer to works from generational peers Superchunk and Girls Against Boys than Jawbox itself. Robbins sounds invigorated here, in love with the freedom to go off in new, poppy directions, such that a song like "Radical Love" finds Robbins going all Wilburys on the guitar-hook and melodic line. It is a beautiful track, and one that, along with the title cut especially, echoes a lot of the sort of thing that Jason Falkner and Jon Brion committed to vinyl in the first few years of their careers. Yes, lots of Un-becoming marks this as a power-pop record, albeit one with the same sort of inventiveness that Robbins has always pursued in any project he's been involved with. Some of this ("Abandoned Mansions", "Firelight") punches with a real ferocity of the sort that won't feel entirely new to long-time fans of Jawbox, for example, but a few other numbers here, specifically the previously-released "Anodyne" and "Our Own Devices", see Robbins inch even closer to the kind of prog-influenced art rock one-time label-mates Shudder to Think and Snakes used to routinely offer up.
And for all of this praise of J. Robbins and the musical risks he's taking here on Un-becoming, it's worth mentioning the other players helping him out. We've got the power-house of Peter Moffett (Government Issue, Foxhall Stacks) on drums, Gordon Withers (Garland of Hours) on cello and guitar, and Brooks Harlan (Office of Future Plans) on bass. They give this material a lot of weight, such that Un-becoming sounds less like a J. Robbins project, and more like yet another fantastic band with J. Robbins in it. With those players here, Un-becoming obviously has a bit of a harDCore vibe about it, even if the tunes here are remarkably mainstream ones in many ways. It's Robbins' Foo Fighters in some sense, except he's still going strong with Jawbox who are on tour at the moment, and he's little likely to pack it all in now in a bid for wide mainstream fame. Robbins, one of the real heavyweights in this city of harDCore legends, here offers up a, frankly, fantastically-accessible record, and, perhaps, the best thing he's ever done outside of his main band.
Un-becoming is out on Friday via Dischord Records.
More details on J. Robbins via his official Facebook page, his official website, or via the link below.
[Photo: Janet Morgan]