In another life, Jimmy Whispers was James Cicero, vocalist and frontman for Chicago-based indie pop ensemble Light Pollution. After that group dissolved some years back, Whispers adopted his childhood nickname—he was a soft-spoken kid—for his solo work. His keyboard demos attracted the attention of fellow lo-fi eccentric Ariel Pink, who invited him to open a few of his shows. Whispers may have appeared as a kindred spirit to Pink, but the Midwestern songwriter approaches his work with far less theatricality and chaos than the volatile L.A. figure. His quick, sweet debut Summer in Pain is pared down to the basics, spelling out heartbreak and frustration with a tried-and-true palette of organs, drum machines, and a world-weary tremble.
While Pink at times seems almost unconscious of the labels people apply to his work, Whispers breaks out the B-word within his album's first 30 seconds. He introduces himself as "the greatest bedroom popper...in the tri-state area" before he sings a note. Later in the record, he punctuates songs with interludes in the same register, decrying how he feels like a lost soul in a pre-apocalyptic world. I think he's trying to humanize himself with these gestures, to point out the absurdity of making bedroom pop about his feelings before he goes and does it anyway. But to crack open the fourth wall before he's even built it comes through as a little self-conscious, a little insecure.
Those bedroom pop songs about his feelings, though, are worth the corny showmanship that pads them. Like Owen Ashworth of Advance Base (formerly Casiotone for the Painfully Alone), Whispers can wring heart from a cheap set of keys. The album's middle section shows off his skill at crafting grooves and melodies; "Heart Don't Know" strikes a sugar-coated melancholy with its warm chords churning underneath Whispers' ragged voice. On "Pain in Love", he laments, "I wanna change the way I feel tonight/ I wanna love again." He writes rudimentary lines, but sometimes the best way to undercut depression and desire is just to spell them out in the plainest terms. Sometimes all you need to feel better is just to ask for it.
"Love is easy when you don't give a shit," Whispers advises on "Michael, Don't Cry". "Life is easy when you want to die." The only conclusions he manages to reach on Summer in Pain contradict themselves, but they're the best indication of where his head's at. Here's a guy trying to claw his way out of a tangled emotional state by pretending he's surrounded by clean lines. It works when he sticks to the music. The spoken-word framing screams "look at me, I'm here, I exist", when the songs are enough to convince us in the first place.
