Back in 2012, J Fernandez sidelined his day job as a cartographer and released a pair of indoorsy bedroom-pop nuggets packed with Adderall-infused Byrds riffs and cabin-fever ambience. Three years and about as many interviews later, the Chicago songwriter remains elusive on his debut album, and yet easier to pin musically: the songs on Many Levels of Laughter are intricate, introspective, and self-contained, while hinting at a world just beyond the scope of the music that’s too dauntingly ordinary to warrant investigating.
While Fernandez crafts a distinctive blend of dextrous, spidery guitars and quivering organ, he’s practically anonymous as a lyricist. The record opens insisting that "Communication is a waste of time" and follows the theme. "Please don’t listen to me," he implores on "Casual Encounter", as if his presence center-stage were some kind of mistake. "Read My Mind" depicts a similar glossophobia within a muted relationship, its ambiguous opening line–"No conversation, and everything is fine"–poised between pre-breakup denial and passive-aggressive petulance. Fernandez is emotionally static, his problems less exclaimed than exhaled, so it’s no surprise when, for stretches of the record, his voice disappears entirely.
Musically Many Levels of Laughter has a neat breadth: His jauntier, jazzier passages explore the bits of Tim Buckley’s Starsailor that Doldrums bypassed on Lesser Evil, while interlude "Markers" deploys curious, playful paddling sounds against an odd, melancholy jingle. His hooks have nuance and charm–you can hear the cognitive cogs whirring behind "Apophis"’s squiggling organs, the shivery up-strokes in "Between the Channels". But even at the record’s most kaleidoscopic, Fernandez sings cautiously, as if each note were subject to stringent security checks before leaving his mouth.
"Break your habits, try a different route," he croaks on closer "Melting Down", a flash of wishful thinking as eerie, lunar synths orbit an ambling krautrock beat. As if to keep him company, a gently stirring bassline kicks in, heaving itself up the fretboard. The forward momentum is welcome, albeit akin to the flicker of daylight in a dark room as an oscillator fan tickles the curtains. After 30 minutes of cosmic despondence, though, that reprieve almost feels misplaced. Rather than celebrating isolation, Fernandez' songs use the languid, daydreamy haze of bedroom pop to hint at the pathos of wasted life.
