Jay Crocker calls his latest album under the JOYFULTALK nom de plume Familiar Science. It's anything but. My initial impression of the album was that he was doing an outré amalgamation of Jeff Parker's inspired deviations, isolated from a Tortoise writing session, and reborn in a prenatal chamber of his own variation. The more times I plumbed through Familiar Science though, the more alien it seemed to become to me- and the more enthralled I became with it. This is such a rare experience when listening to an album. It's can become easy to get complacent on your fifth or sixth listen because you have acclimated to an album's internal climate and terrain. That has not become a problem with Familiar Science, and I am still actively devoting brain powder to figuring it out and sorting through my reactions. For instance, why do I find the title track so haunting, and why is the percussion so gratingly raw and impulsive, and yet, humbly intimate? Why does "Ballad in 9" leave the impression that I'm dodging through a hail storm of knives on one playthrough and like I'm washing an inch of peat and mud off my shoulders with the aid of a summer rain shower the next? How is it that every time I hear "Take It To The Grave," I get the impression that I need to move my feet as fast as possible, like I'm trying to outrun a subway train while concurrently practicing a highly aerobic dance routine, all while being coached by the ghost Patrick Swayze and another apparition that strangely resembles Jennifer Bealsin a peculiar and unsettling manner? I can't rightly say. All I know is that Familiar Science has my undivided attention, and it's going to keep it as well. Because if I turn from its dazzlingly incongruous display to mind something else for even a moment while it is on, I'm sure to miss something extraordinary.
Available from Constellation
