First things first: though much of Hologram Jams sounds superficially similar to Jaguar Love's 2008 debut Take Me to the Sea, the band and the music have been through a few important changes. Or more specifically, given that these guys are known to shout themselves out like rappers, and lead singer Johnny Whitney runs his own fashion line (the new LP also comes with a limited edition wristband for folks who pre-ordered), it's probably better explained as a rebranding. Whitney became increasingly fond of writing songs on a drum machine, which led to the release of drummer Jay Clark, and Whitney and Cody Votolato (both formerly of the Blood Brothers) reappeared as a duo with more of a dance flavor and switched labels from Matador to Fat Possum.
Take Me to the Sea is still a good record, but its uniquely psychotic fusion of hardcore, heavy metal, glam, electro, and kitsch was also Jaguar Love's central problem: It's highly combustible and can't last forever. Instead of blowing up and starting over, however, Whitney and Votolato opted to slim down the band's concept along with its ranks. As an unfortunate side effect, they've more or less drained everything vital and exciting out of the first album, and replaced those ingredients with generic equivalents. Hologram Jams (that title remind you of Oracular Spectacular or Robotique Majestique?) is a vastly inferior record to Sea, replacing the dynamic punk psychedelia of their debut with sugary overstimulation and rank nostalgia.
There's no better encapsulation of the record's overall tone than "Everything Is Awesome", which fleshes out a sentiment fit for a puffy sticker at the top of a fifth grader's A+ paper with exhortations like "you are the ultra-star" and "you're glowing in the dark" over boilerplate dance-rock signifiers. On the whole, the first three-quarters of Jams is more or less a list of stuff that the band thinks is totally rad: drinking 40s, "Immigrant Song", staying up all night, starting fires, cherry soda, puking up said cherry soda on the lawn after a party, riding a "motherfucking mastodon," graveyards. Like the title, these things aren't just annoyingly deployed in the manner of a 15-year-old's Facebook page, they feel target marketed, a strategically laid-out shop window display devoted to spazzy youthful dumbassery. The music follows suit: For a conceit so superficially high-energy, the dirty repetitiousness of the synths, drum machines, and modern-rock guitars are stunningly bland and repetitious. This until the shock of recognition of the album's last song, which, yes, is a cover of "Piece of My Heart". Which... no. At best, the cover is a bad aesthetic choice rendered unimaginatively. At worst, it feels like a cheap attempt to manufacture a show-closing sing-along that appeals across demographics.
The stylistic shifts on Jam suggest that Jaguar Love know exactly what they're doing and why they're doing it, even if the new direction isn't a step forward. And though you could argue that Jaguar Love have succeeded in making their music register on a physical level, the primary sensation I'm getting here is exhaustion, and not the fun kind. The deeper and longer I immerse myself within their nihilistic high-fructose corn syrup soundworld-- "Sugar-coated cherry soda/ It's like the future's over"-- the more I want to crash on the couch with a bad headache.
