Jawbox's J Robbins announces debut solo album (stream a track)
Not only are Jawbox finally reuniting for their first tour in over 20 years this year, frontman J. Robbins (also of Government Issue, Burning Airlines, Office of Future Plans, and more) is releasing his first full-length solo album, Un-becoming, on May 31 via Dischord. J recorded and produced the album at his Baltimore studio The Magpie Cage with Pete Moffett (Government Issue, Burning Airlines) on drums, Brooks Harlan (War On Women, Office of Future Plans) on bass, Gordon Withers (Office of Future Plans) on cello, Chris Brooks (Lionize) on keyboards, and Andrew Grimm (June Star) on pedal steel, and here’s what he says about it:
Un-becoming was written and recorded in brief, intense bursts of activity between 2015 – 2018, as my most recent band, Office of Future Plans, was winding to a close. OFP had been born in 2011, from demos for an earlier solo project, but, the thing is … I like bands. The social unit of a band, the creation of a new entity, with its own aura, its own intrigue, out of a collective effort … those things are very appealing to me.
Until very recently, as someone who has always been in collaborative bands, – even if I was the main writer or arranger – the idea of making a “J. Robbins record” made me uncomfortable. And of course once all the members of OFP were working with the material, a collaborative band dynamic naturally emerged, and whatever we were doing together, it didn’t feel right to call it a solo project. However as OFP went on, though it seemed less and less appropriate for me to dictate to the group, writing by jamming wasn’t really clicking either. We had a lot of jams, but no new songs. Concurrently, I started playing more solo shows, and started trying to write songs that would hold up independently of how they were arranged (i.e. the song could still hold on to its essence, its identity, whether a band plays it, or I play it solo guitar and voice, or piano, with electronics, or whatever). I was influenced in this direction by my fandom of the music of John Cale and John Vanderslice, and by production work I had done with some songwriters I knew personally and admired: specifically Andy Bopp, Ryan Patterson of Fotocrime, and Anne Watts of Boister. I mostly kept my guitar in an open tuning, as an attempt to stop myself from trying to be a “clever guitarist” and instead stick to the simplest elements of song structure. These songs ended up feeling much more direct than anything I had ever written before, and I was really excited about them. They also didn’t feel like OFP to me.
The process was really slow, owing to limited time as much as anything else, and I wanted to be able to accommodate that without feeling like I was wasting anyone else’s time or keeping anyone on the hook. All those considerations led me to embrace the idea of a solo record. I knew I could record the songs here at my studio, where I felt at home, but only a day here, a day there, whenever I wasn’t booked to work on other people’s recordings. So, it would be a sporadic thing by necessity. I called up my old friend and former Burning Airlines drummer Pete Moffett to help me record the tunes, since besides being a great drummer and a good friend (who essentially taught me how to play bass when we were in Government Issue together) I always knew him as someone who preferred to fill in an existing song structure rather than jam and see where it would lead. Brooks Harlan was a natural choice to play bass, since he and I have a real musical sympathy – not to mention sharing a studio space. It’s also a very different venue for him since his main outlet is as the guitarist of War on Women – very different musically. My former OFP bandmate Gordon Withers also made great contributions on guitar and cello to about half the songs – although other songs seemed complete without a second guitar. I also enlisted Chris Brooks, keyboard player of Lionize, for one song, and Andrew Grimm of June Star to play pedal steel on another. It was fun, and a new thing for me, to pull in new collaborators in this episodic way. Lyrics-wise, I wasn’t consciously setting out to write an album of protest songs, but as the orchestrated unravelling of society continues, as the cultural commons daily become more and more vicious and absurd, catharsis becomes more necessary, so just about all these songs have that in common.
The first single is “Soldier On,” which finds J making the kind of punchy, catchy punk that fans of his classic ’90s material should find very appealing. As he gears up for his highly anticipated nostalgia tour with Jawbox, it’s exciting to hear that his new music sounds great too. Listen below.
As mentioned, Jawbox’s reunion tour includes a sold-out NYC show at Brooklyn Steel on 6/22, a newly-added stop at The Fest, and more. Openers vary by date and include The Velvet Teen, No Knife, Justin Courtney Pierre (Motion City Soundtrack), Craig Wedren (Shudder To Think), The Life and Times, The Pauses, LAPêCHE, and Second Letter.
Tracklist
Anodyne
Abandoned Mansions
Your Majesty
Our Own Devices
Un-becoming
Kintsugi
Radical Love
Skeleton Coast
Soldier On
Citizen
Firelight
Stella Vista
