It’s got a killer vibe like that Donnie and Joe record but with a cool Jesus and Mary Chain melodic sense, but waaay more laid back, desert-style so it sounds totally unique.
And a few more from Ben Seretan:
Every jangly guitar chord ever broadcast over AM radio is still out there vibrating, one wave among many in the ever-expanding cosmos. They hear Roy Orbison’s three-octaves loud and clear at the other end of the galaxy, the Vox Continental minor/major organ stabs from ’96 Tears’ teeter around the edge of some celestial Kirby Crackle, The Ronettes’ broken hearted melodies bounce off purple deserts on the dark side of Venus. The songs are out there, you simply have to tune your instruments to them.
Jason Woodbury is a galactic citizen, dialing in from the Sonoran Desert on planet Earth. Something Happening / Always Happening is the debut from his project JPW. It’s a collection of songs you might hear on the radio after a cosmic camping trip, familiar but far off. Songs for stepping out of the spaceship to crack a goddamn cold one on a blurry summer day, taking a moment to enjoy the smell of freshly cut grass.
Woodbury’s voice may be familiar to those interested in the more theologic strains of American songwriting. For the last decade, he’s penned liner notes and criticism, and contributed to Aquarium Drunkard, hosting the weekly Transmissions podcast and Range and Basin on Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard on dublab, a radiophonic showcase for his love of comic books, science fiction, and mysticism. All of that is legible on the surface of Something Happening / Always Happening, but here listeners are gifted with another side of Jason’s voice: his singing, which is just as unhurried and serene as you’d expect.
Mostly self-recorded by Woodbury with longtime musical collaborators Zach Toperek and Zane Gillum, the album was produced by Michael Krassner of Boxhead Ensemble, a long running instrumental combo which has aligned members of Dirty Three, Califone, Will Oldham, Gastr del Sol, Jim O’Rourke, and many more. A natural outgrowth of their work together on Range and Basin and shared love of Arizona’s diverse topography, Krassner wandered deep into the sounds, adding guitar and piano to the ghostly tones, percolating Rhythm Ace drum machine beats, and sand dune surf guitars. The result is mood music in a sense—listen casually and you might even miss the unexplained aerial phenomena before your eyes. But by the time the final / title track, built on a sample of Link Cromwell‘s (Lenny Kaye) “Crazy Like a Fox,” reaches its atomizing 9th minute, Woodbury’s thesis is clear: not only are we all made of star stuff, that stuff is alive and vibrating. Adjust your frequencies and hear it sing.”
