Jeremy Jay grew up in Los Angeles speaking exclusively French. If his idea of the cinematic differs from the glacial landscapes of Sigur Rós, or the widescreen orchestration of Eluvium, blame it on Jean-Luc Godard. The lo-fi pop singer/songwriter's releases evoke an urban boulevard of yet-unbroken dreams, starting with 2005 debut 7" "This City Tonight" and continuing through last year's piano-synth instrumental Dreamland soundtrack LP. Like Peter Pan or a left-coast Jonathan Richman, Jay takes us to his imagined worlds on the Airwalker EP, released late last year, and first proper full-length A Place Where We Could Go. Both are bathed in reverb the way film noir is in shadow.
The Airwalker EP, then, is a cryptic, compelling short. As with Jay's "We Were There" 7", released about the same time, the EP tucks Jay's half-crooned, half-spoken vocals into a bed of interlocking guitars, rigid beats, and analogue synths, creating an air of mystery out of disconnected images. Where the 40-second intro is a dubbier variation on the title track, doing little more than establish Jay's predisposition toward intros, "Airwalker" itself finds Jay singing beneath his usual voice, his reflecting intonations sounding like Ian Curtis, though there's a knowing artiness in the chuckles emanating from the right side of the speakers. "What's in the air when you're walking on air?/ Where can we go when the lights are low?" Jay repeats. More about images than meanings, it's the opening shot that draws the audience in.
The rest of the EP presages A Place Where We Could Go's stark lullabies more clearly, even as it fails to achieve the title track's magic. Piano features amid the Morrissey-esque wordless murmuring of finale "Can We Disappear?", with its lyrics about shadows, and on the bass-driven "We Stay Here (In Our Secret World)", in which a "secret" boy and "secret" girl "talk of secret things" while driving down the boulevard past street lamps. "Lunar Camel" has the EP's most intricate guitar riff as well as its most explicit reference to pre-rock music ("Fly me to the moon"). The reverb-swept tambourine and guitar jangle of 1980s indie's 60s nostalgia accompanies what could be set directions on "Angels on the Balcony", with its talk of afterglows, open doors, phantom cigarettes, silent cries, and "the kids," always the kids.
A Place Where We Could Go, produced with great understatement by K founder and former Beat Happening frontman Calvin Johnson, is Jay's feature film. At slightly less than 29 minutes, it's a slight one, reminiscent of an era before 78-minute CDs-- and on it, Jay fittingly ditches the synths, playing guitars and pianos while Chris Sutton (of Olympia, Wash., groups C.O.C.O. and the Johnson-led Dub Narcotic Sound System) adds loose, simple drumming that varies in intensity as the songs dictate. From a six-second opener with Jay sighing "night, night" to a bare, piano-driven finale asserting that "Someone Cares", Jay's debut plays out like a Buddy Holly- and yé-yé-informed soundtrack to a night of wistful dreams that eventually (sort of?) come true. If there are hints of Bowie in there, it might just be a mutual admiration for British actor, singer, and songwriter Anthony Newley ("Pure Imagination", "Goldfinger").
The simple arrangements, like Jay's spoken-sung vocals, recall the solo work of Jonathan Richman, who has also bridged the pre-rock era with a punk sensibility, the Stop & Shop with the lesbian bar. Jay's songs are best when the images they're centered around have, like 50s icons James Dean or Marilyn Monroe, a certain dream-like hyper-reality: the youthful title character of the fuzzed-out "Beautiful Rebel", the mysterious figures of slow doo-wop waltz "The Living Dolls", or the narrator dreaming "of a story to tell/ While you lay there in soft white sheets" on "Escape to Aspen". The first full-length track, night-night-bidding "Heavenly Creatures", pictures a face with "porcelain skin, ruby-red lips, dark blond hair, fairy tale look." The slightly plodding, flamenco-flavored "Till We Meet Again" has its bike ride at midnight, and the title track borrows the lamppost from the Airwalker EP.
None of this is as overly precious as it might sound-- Jay emphasizes mood over cleverness-- but the drowsy pacing and sentimental leanings won't be for everybody. Jay's voice takes on a higher tone on "While the City Sleeps", over snapped fingers and one of the album's fleeting bass lines, as he compares a dream-walk with a lover to, what else, a movie. The shambling "Hold Me in Your Arms Tonite" remakes the bed into a place for making love-- "true love," as obvious as it is necessary to the album's narrative arc (such as it is). On bonus track "Oh, Bright Young Things", Jay murmurs, "The other day my dreams and life seemed like one/ In my dreams I know how to fly." A Place Where We Could Go probably wouldn't make much of a film, but it's a mostly picturesque escape.
