Laura Kerry
His latest release in his nine years as Ducktails, Matt Mondanile’s Jersey Devil is both a return to the familiar and a march into uncharted territory.
That contradiction starts with the conditions of the album’s creation. For as long as Mondanile has performed as Ducktails, he has dedicated most of his attention playing guitar for Real Estate, but last year he parted ways with the band to focus exclusively on his solo project. Setting out on a new path, the artist ended up back where he started: his mom’s basement in Ridgewood, New Jersey (he repays her with a warm and fuzzy tribute on “Keeper of the Garden,” singing, “I’ve never loved a woman more than I love my mom ... If you see her give her flowers”). The title of Jersey Devil refers to a folkloric Garden State beast (and X-Files episode) that stalks the coastal woods, a fitting metaphor for a guy who has returned to haunt his old stomping grounds.
In sound, Jersey Devil is also a mix of old and new. Since his first album in 2009, Ducktails’ sunny psych-pop has become increasingly polished, leading up to his tightest and glossiest work, 2015’s St. Catherine. This new album marks a return to the lo-fi, bedroom-pop aesthetic of Mondanile’s earlier music. Using a muted palette of drum machine, retro synths, and guitar, he travels back through time, situating us in a version of the suburbs from Stranger Things or, one could imagine, the way the artist might have experienced them as a kid in the ‘80s. Opening on “Map to the Stars,” a track with a restrained batch of synth sounds to match the celestial title, Ducktails sets the stage for travel into another galaxy in the hull of a cardboard spaceship—a spacey journey with simple tools.
Also different on Jersey Devil is Ducktails’ favoring of digital sounds. In both this project and Real Estate, Mondanile has defined himself by the characteristic sound of his sun-saturated guitar. While his new album includes the occasional jangle, it relies much more on fluid washes of synths. Between this and the often-subdued vocals, some of the album feels hazy and indistinct; it is recognizably Ducktails, but sometimes the ‘70s soft-rock version. Jersey Devil eases in, though, picking up energy towards the middle in songs such as “Lover,” “Mannequin,” and “Shattered Mirror Travel”—all of which feature strong basslines and other sturdier elements to ground them. In these and other places, Ducktails takes the best of his distinct sound and pushes it in a new direction.
As the artist himself might have recently experienced, Jersey Devil feels like coming back to your childhood home to find that your parents have rearranged some rooms. It is uncannily familiar and foreign at the same time. Once you settle in, you might find you like the new layout.