REVIEW: Jons - At Work On Several Things

Kelly Kirwan

After listening to Jons' previous album, Serfs of Today, back in May, I noted that their sound was awash in psych-revival haze, a “shoulder-shrug” rock that drifted along with loose limbs and an easy grin. This was a band that preferred their shimmering guitars front and center, as echoing, lazy vocals acted as a current to guide the melody. It was clear that Jons was a band that enjoyed on-the-brink fuzz, like an electrical wire humming with wasp-nest apprehension.

The band’s follow-up album, At Work On Several Things, is a 13-track opus that blends psychedelia with brassy jazz influences. These boys from British Columbia have never been afraid to revel in instrumentals, and this style is especially poignant when a lingering saxophone drapes a slinky mood over their melodies. Where Serfs of Today had song titles rife with grand, religious references, At Work On Several Things sports names that elevate the everyday—"In the Yard," "Gutter Master," "Hotel," and "Retirement." They evoke images of mundane yardwork and banal weekend getaways, but imbue them with the grandeur of psychedelia. 

"Retirement" is an inconspicuous stream of consciousness laid across a leisurely, twangy beat. The guitars meander beside occasional dots of wobbly, spacey synths as humdrum thoughts drift in and out, like twirling wisps of smoke from an extinguished candle. “What would you give to feel young again? / What percentage is your favorite drink … What’s the age when life begins? / What’s the worst job you’ve had?” It’s a slew of questions that have no urgency, some fleeting curiosity to fill a quiet moment—but there’s something achingly sad buried beneath the sunny atmosphere.

"Everything Happens to You" is their longest track by a landslide, clocking in at just over nine minutes. It’s a repetitive, undulating sort of riff that feels evocative of a clocktower’s chimes, building tension towards some abstract breaking point. The saxophone slinks it’s way into the fold, adding a few fluttering notes and a sultry offset to the underlying sense of urgency. In fact, this dynamic seems subtly sprinkled throughout the album in it's entirety.

On At Work On Several Things, Jons manage to combine a love of psych’s languid, distorted air with an exploration of the pressures of day-to-day life. But the album transforms these heavy realities into drifting beats so effortlessly that it's easy to keep floating forward, suspended in a sea of psychedelic haze, and realize that maybe those pressures aren't as bad as you thought.

REVIEW: Jons - Serfs Of Today

Kelly Kirwan

Jons is the four-piece, Victoria, BC import that’s mixed psych-revival with shoulder-shrug rock, gifting us meandering guitar riffs that have a tangy twinge and tracks that have deep cultural and religious references. Jons is like the stoned prodigy that would raise their hand in your college philosophy lecture, and shock the room with their insights (it takes skill to pull that off without being insufferable). Their latest 12-track album, Serfs of Today, was written and recorded entirely by the four bandmates—on an 8-track tape machine, rumor has it—and has been garnering comparisons to classic and modern greats like Harry Nilson, Mac DeMarco, and Kurt Vile.

Their sound is refined, but also has a sense of intimacy. A track like "Feta Morgana," for instance, feels as if your ear is practically pressed to the side of the guitar—it's almost an ode to jam-band sessions, without a single lyric throughout. The song is also (as you may have guessed) a play on Fata Morgana, mirages that appear on the edge of the horizon. It’s like a reference made during a spell of serious munchies, which also plays into Jons’ lackadaisical spirit (and apparent affinity for cheese).

"I Haven’t Heard" is certainly one of the album's standouts, with an acoustic vibe and vocals that have a vague, echoing quality. The overdubs that are gradually introduced after the song's halfway mark were improvised, and the track unfolds in both a contemplative and almost eerie manner. I suppose it makes sense, considering the subject matter: original sin, Eve’s brush with the devil and his disguise, “the inevitable misstep of free will.” For all the intensity of material, Jons still manage to roll out the track with a pondering air—their biblical imagery doesn’t come with the undertones of doom you'd usually expect.

Then there’s "Sugarfree," which has emerged as a cymbal-lined fan favorite. The vocals are easy, practically floating on a cloud of good kush (last drug reference, scout's honor). Again, the guitar interludes are impressively on point, and Jons definitely plays with classic psych tropes, which enjoyed long lapses of instrumentals for some closed-eyed head-bobbing. Jons' tracks are blends of mild distortion and go-with-the-flow harmonies, and definitely do the trick when it comes to getting the audience to tune in and tune out.

Serfs of Today is lo-fi pop that’s more than just a hazy distraction. Jons are as interested in depth as they are in magnetic chord progressions, and I highly recommend a dose of their easygoing rock.

REVIEW: Jon Varley - The Missing Kink

Laura Kerry

Jon Varley’s latest solo release is one of those albums that’s easily mistaken for old music. Right down to the buzzing, lo-fi production, it sounds like its creator should sport a mop-top haircut and roam the streets of North London wearing a suit with comically wide lapels. Varley—who’s from Victoria, BC, Canada and plays with the bands Painted Fruits and Novel—knows this and readily admits it. So much so, in fact, that he named his album The Missing Kink, both a pun and a reference to the influence of the Kinks.

Some songs seem transported directly from the instruments and mouths of the Kinks or their contemporaries. On “Won’t Forget Why,” Varley sounds like the third Davies brother on his sunniest day (before the band earned the epithet, “the original punks”), singing in an expressive and scratchy voice while a chorus of “ahs” descends behind him. In “For Whom I Have Eyes,” a sweet love song, the roaming bass and guitar transparently borrow pieces of blues, country, folk, and the other seeds of rock in the way that the Kinks did, though they did it at a time when that was a fresher act. Varley pieces them together with such a light and natural, though, that he makes it feel fresh again.

The Missing Kink fits in with the many modern-day adaptations that have breathed new life into old things—to take a few examples from film, 10 Things I Hate About You for Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, and Gnomeo and Juliet (har, har). In “Roll Drum,” the shortest but one of the sweetest on the album, Varley talks about his love of smoking, a topic the Kinks and their contemporaries never covered in exactly this way, but in a style that they did. Over music that slides around in the faintly psychedelic way of the Kinks’ “See My Friend,” he sings, “I’ve been smoking all day long / Please don’t tell me that it’s wrong,” and later, “Burns so hot / Burns so sweet / Finding holes all in my sheets.” The lyrics are strictly the stuff of today, and, set against a round of “ooh ooh, la la la la” and the clean, bright guitar of the early- to mid-‘60s, they are undeniably charming and anything but stale.

Like “Roll Drum,” many of Varley’s best songs are ones that have updated past themes, often in a tongue-and-cheek way. “Plaster Smile, etc.” for example, is the perfect contemporary love song about something we can all relate to: falling for a barista. “Nice neck tattoo,” Varley sings,“Is it new? / Oh, she’s a vegan / What book are you reading?” Later, there’s a reference to a haircut with shaved sides, vintage glasses, and an unfriendly demeanor. It’s not only funny and on-point, but with its jazzy walking bass line and jangling guitars, it’s just plain good as well.

It also underscores an important distinction: Varley isn’t aiming to move backward in that nostalgic, stuck way that old-sounding music often does; instead he just operates in the modes of the past to create something good for today. And The Missing Kink is indeed so good for today that you might even listen to it again tomorrow.