At some point it became clear that one of the themes for the first quarter of 2015 would be The Return of the Male Piano Balladeer. Upcoming records from Father John Misty, Matthew E. White, and new kid/not-kid Tobias Jesso Jr. (he’s 29) would all center on an archetype now associated mostly with the 1970s: the weary dude, wise beyond his years, spinning tales of love and loss from his piano bench before moving over to a barstool. It’s an image that took hold during the '60s hangover, when baby boomers traded youthful dreams and started becoming their parents, a little less certain with each new season that they were, in fact, still crazy after all these years. This highly personal, smaller-scale music was less about The World and more about the geography of a wounded heart. Jesso, Misty and White, in their own ways, are all drawn to a similar directness, a love of the well-written song composed and performed solo.
Hearing Tobias Jesso Jr.’s album, Goon, it turns out he has less in common with his peers than we thought. Father John Misty’s J. Tillman is by far the most literate and complicated of the three songwriters, using a fictional persona to plumb the depths of his own desires and self-loathing. Matthew E. White is more producer and arranger than singer-songwriter, someone who lets the horn arrangements and mic placement do the talking. And Tobias Jesso Jr. is ultimately more of a wide-eyed innocent, a songwriter with a naturally expressive voice who has a McCartney-like propensity for melody and an innate drive toward simplicity.
In the late '60s and early '70s, L.A. singer-songwriters like Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, and Tom Waits got their start by writing songs for others, playing small clubs on Sunset, and skulking around record label offices. Jesso did try writing for others, but his rise could only happen on the Internet: Some songs posted to YouTube, an exchange with an admired producer (in the case of Jesso, Girls' JR White), a debut record on a hip label, and a "The Tonight Show" appearance before the LP even comes out. This isn’t just luck, of course—Jesso already had some connections from his time living and working in music in Los Angeles and a few famous friends, and his little label is part of the indie juggernaut Beggars Group. But if his quick ascent owes a lot to living in a networked world, his music sounds as natural as breathing. Jesso has a knack for writing songs that you feel like you’ve heard before, even if you can’t quite pin down a precise antecedent. Which is another way of saying he writes songs that sound "classic" in the best sense of the word.
The highlights here sound like songs that could be covered and interpreted any number of ways by other vocalists, with a rock-solid melodic and harmonic foundation. "How Could You Babe" is among them, moving from slow, halting verses that build tension until the glorious release of the chorus. On the last refrain, Jesso pushes his voice in its upper register to the point where it cracks, a clever suggestion of desperation that speaks to his intuitive sense of phrasing. "The Wait" is a two-minute acoustic pop confection featuring Jesso on guitar, a weightless gem that floats by like a freshly blown dandelion seed. A pair of songs, "Hollywood" and "Leaving LA", hint at Jesso’s background as a journeyman musician in Los Angeles, but the main idea behind virtually every song is the precariousness of love and affection.
Fans of those YouTube demos had to wonder how Jesso’s intimate music might hold up to studio glare, but Jesso’s producers (White handled eight songs, Pat Carney of Black Keys two, and Ariel Rechtshaid one) treat his music with a simplicity that suggests utter confidence in the material. The songwriter’s voice, piano chords, and plucked acoustic are the focus, and bits of light drumming and the odd back-up vocal are often the only augmentation. The approach leads to songs that feel unusually whole. You couldn't imagine taking anything away from these songs, and it's equally hard to imagine adding anything. "Leaving LA" is a masterpiece of sonic understatement, moving between solo piano and a blissful interlude of voices and what sounds like harpsichord. "Bad Words" finds Jesso’s voice pinched and distant next to a Fender Rhodes and subtle drumming. His vocal line and piano move in unison on "For You" as a violin saws away in the background; it all bleeds together until it feels like a single, intricately textured sound.
If Jesso seems to have a Burt Bacharach-like command of how verses, choruses, and bridges can add up to more than the sum of their parts, he’s got a ways to go before giving Hal David a run for his money with the pen. The words are here to serve the music, to fit the rhythm and cadence of the tune rather than the other way around. In a couple of places ("Crocodile Tears" and "Can We Still Be Friends", which sounds disconcertingly like the theme song from "Cheers") that can lead to rhyme schemes so predictable in their girl/world obviousness as to become a distraction. But these moments are few, and Jesso overcomes them as McCartney did—with the sweetness of his voice. "There’s a thing called hate/ And a thing called love, too/ Like the love I have for your Mom/ And for you" reads awkwardly on the page, but Jesso’s smooth musical diction makes it sound almost wise. His voice couldn’t be any more suited to this kind of music if it was created in a lab, but beyond just hitting the notes he also has a great feel for inflection, how to squeeze the most out of every syllable and transition.
With its clear debt to a specific era, Goon has a meta quality, an album of music that illustrates the power of music. While the songs are almost all about heartbreak, they could be more likely to have you ruminating about the role music plays in heartbreak instead of the emotional pain itself, but this distancing effect, in which the songs unfold so patiently, doesn’t diminish the record’s pleasures. Of the trio of 2015 songwriters mentioned above, Jesso sounds the most like Nilsson, in terms of the grain of his voice and his ability to sound wounded while also floating just above his travails, but his music is very different in spirit; Jesso’s approach is to state things plainly, dress them up in a gorgeous tune, and sit down and deliver it in the most spare and economical manner possible. Goon isn’t an album of layers; what you hear is what you get, which in this case turns out to be something special.
