Whenever some idiot convinced you that stuff like crushes and holding hands was dumb, that what you should really care about is getting action, that's when you became an adult and started dying. I think I'm paraphrasing fellow music critic Chuck Eddy here. Remember your first slow dances, seventh or eight grade? For me there was a lot of nervous excitement, plus whatever you call the emotion when you're a clumsy preteen dancing to "The End of the Road" with the girl you like, or "I Swear" with the girl who likes you. I seem to recall high school dances being similarly fraught. Now try to think of the last time you felt something that intensely.
Jeremy Jay, then, must live in Neverland. But is he Peter Pan-- or Michael Jackson? The question gets more interesting on the hiccupy-voiced Paris/L.A. bandleader's second K Records LP. It's the most weirdly mesmerizing in a series of promising single, EP, and full-length releases that includes last year's shadowy, cinematic heart-tugger A Place Where We Could Go. Jay's the type of guy who tours with Deerhunter but covers Madonna just as naturally as Brian Eno. Billed as winter-themed, Slow Dance uses crisp garage-rock and frigid post-punk as a backdrop for romanticized pop fantasy.
"Slow dance" has has basically emerged as its own, resurgent genre these past several years: the cosmic disco of Lindstrøm, Prins Thomas, and Todd Terje; the flamenco-inflamed beach trips of Studio, Boat Club, Hatchback, and Windsurf; the after-hours glide of Glass Candy and Chromatics; the sample-based vacations of Quiet Village and Air France. That connection is probably a coincidence. But then again, maybe it isn't. On the first few listens, I noticed the record's minimal yet evocative lyrical repetitions less than its snow-globe-meticulous sound. Jay recorded the album in winter at Olympia's Dub Narcotic Studio, with bassist Derek James, drummer Nick Pahl, and additional guitarist Ilya Malinsky; the early nights and electric lighting of the season are all over the frosty synth-and-guitar surface of opener "We Were There" (a new version of a 2007 single), the slow strums and cold breaths of gorgeously spare "Winter Wonder", and the choked sobs and fingersnaps of piano waltz "Slow Dance 2". "You've got the rhythm," Jay insists on "In This Lonely Town".
That song also captures a vivid scene, maybe the opening of a film: the narrator walking with his peacoat on, seeing fish by the pier, smelling coffee and sweets by the "pizza club." Part of the pleasure of repeat listens is trying to figure out whether Jay is just too innocent to be true-- like, what's he hiding, right? "Giddyup, horsey, giddyup," goes "Gallop"; "Canter, canter, canter," adds the next song, "Canter Canter". And there Jay is, amid the "disco lights" (!) and Drifters-style percussion of "Will You Dance With Me?", resting his head on your shoulders, "melting in your arms tonight." Jay envisions an angelic guitar-strummer illuminated by a disco ball (!!) on "Where Could We Go Tonight?", again raising more questions than answers. In the final seconds of the most urgent-sounding track, "Breaking the Ice", he murmurs almost as an aside: "Should've told you that I love you." You could choose to dismiss it all as kids' stuff. But that's the idiot talking.
