Happy Jawbone Family Band Happy Jawbone Family Band on LP
Happy Jawbone Family Band recorded their 2013 self-titled album with Jarvis Taverniere (Woods, Meneguar, producer of many a great record over the last few years), and he's shown how to open up their sound without sacrificing the bouts of whimsy and peculiar emotions that arose from previous efforts.
The band met the challenge as well, whether it be songs about finding your father in a dress, trying to resolve the differences between two people, or boiling down childrens' literature into the underlying parables, no matter how crass (their incredible ballad "Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid" sums up this experience: "I really fucked up this time").
The immediate charms that "D-R-E-A-M-I-N" will lay on you reverberate across the rest of the album, on which you'll hear the trippiest moments of the Beatles, the peaks Lindsey Buckingham reached on Tusk, and both poles of American post-punk songwriting royalty, Camper Van Beethoven at one end and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 at the other.
"Our freshest album, we recorded it for Mexican Summer Records in their own deluxe studio, using 2-inch tape, vintage tube-amps and the unwavering artistic vision of Jarvis Traverniere of Woods and Rear House fame. We made it the old fashioned way with demos and different takes and stuff like that, that we've never had the attentions span to do before.
"We played each song over a hundred times before recording, so that we could re-structure the parts and lyrics to reach their absolute potential for devastation in the mind of the listener. Don't worry, we still found time to include our signature "dust-cloud" moments and it sounds like a real happy jawbone album. It's just different so that we don't get bored. And if we don't get bored, you don't get bored." - Happy Jawbone Family Band