Ellis Ludwig-Leone, who records as San Fermin, studied composition at Yale University, served as a musical assistant under Nico Muhly and is a young, pop-classical fixture in New York City. It all sounds quite a lot like the backstory of Dave Longstreth, and his music sounds even more like Longstreth’s: San Fermin’s breakout single "Sonsick" was essentially the Broadway version of "Stillness Is the Move", and the resultant record followed suit with highbrow, heavily orchestrated chamber indie with literary aspirations. Ludwig-Leone remains the project’s primary songwriter, composer, arranger and lyricist, but he takes the focus off himself for Jackrabbit, presenting San Fermin as a legit, eight-person touring band. Once again, the experience is more likely to make you think of other indie A-listers rather than San Fermin.
This was mostly true of San Fermin as well, though it had a debut’s charm. Ludwig-Leone had chops and taste; perhaps a distinct point of view would emerge with experience and time. And besides, its unwieldy ambitions were welcome at a time when the Decemberists, Dirty Projectors, Sufjan Stevens and others were laying low. But rather than building or expanding on his foundation, Ludwig-Leone just piles on and exaggerates: everything San Fermin did, Jackrabbit does twice as loud.
The vocals are still split almost equally between Charlene Kaye and Allen Tate and alternate on a song-by-song basis. But San Fermin’s storyline has been exchanged for generic signifiers. Narrators "run for the hills" on the title track, aspire for "The Glory", enter "The Cave", get lost in "The Woods", and fall "down, down, down the rabbit hole" without much further elaboration. Kaye’s features are more enjoyable, especially when they take after "Sonsick": even if the elements are familiar, at least they’re combined in a novel way, and they allow you to indulge in some circa-2005 indie rock fantasy booking: What if Sufjan Stevens got a hold of Amber Coffman and put her at the forefront of his most bombastic Illinois orchestrations? That’s pretty much the pitch for "Jackrabbit" and "Philosopher", songs where Ludwig-Leone’s bold melodies and gushing orchestration have a vocalist who can keep up.
And at the very least, Kaye’s songs tend to evoke several bands at once. Allen Tate, however, has either never heard the National or has never listened to any band other than the National. There’s no other way to explain the staggering degree to which Allen Tate sounds exactly like Matt Berninger. Not Leonard Cohen, not Mark Kozelek, or anyone else in the lineage of dour, baritone barstool bards. Just Matt Berninger. His vocals are subject to the same exact cadences, the exact melodic contours, the same wink-and-nod affectations, the same grim humor, the same vocabulary. When Tate takes the lead, San Fermin becomes the equivalent of a shaky music biopic, completely compromised by the uncanny valley effect of having someone not quite be the person he constantly reminds you of. The script, the setting, the soundtrack—all of it is rendered moot.
Worse yet, the melodramatic production on "Emily" and "Woman in Red" ensures they can't even pass as pleasant mimicry. The wearying volume of Jackrabbit is the most taxing aspect of a record that already arrives intentionally overstuffed. Ludwig-Leone has revealed himself to be a pop maximalist, as even the minute-long interludes are given to Backdraft-like bursts of horns and strings. Maybe the guy's heart is truly in theater, as Jackrabbit's overwrought spectacle unintentionally doubles as "Indie Rock in the Aughts: The Musical."
