Jaill Knows How We Burn

Wisconsin group, Jaill, are an interesting bunch of characters. While none of them are convicts (at least to our knowledge), this group are a bunch of sneaky devils who have managed to wrap 90's college rock in a thickly veiled disguise of 21st century indie. Their album, This Is How We Burn, is a gritty, rough, and shoddy affair that sounds like it's all being held together by a thin layer of whiskey. Imagine if you will, a less depressing Shins with a five dollar budget and armed with a Tascam 8 track recorder and you kind of have an idea of where Jaill are coming from. This is beat up, unpolished stuff that buries it's melodies and hooks underneath a tarnish that's almost impossible to clean away.

Reverb bounces off amplifiers, twangy guitars sound like they're broken, lackadaisical vocals sleepwalk their way through and This Is How We Burn happily rumbles it's way through eleven songs. This Is How We Burn, despite being raw and ragged, is a rather fantastic record. With gritty jangle by the ton and a recording that sounds like it was put together while the band were on tour in a back of a van it's amazing that This Is How We Burnis as cohesive as it is. Quite honestly, this thing really should have fallen apart by about the third song but somehow Jaill manage to hold it all together. Chalk it up to Jaill's ability to make something brilliant out of nothing, but they manage keep it all in onepice with sheer willpower and finding a harmony where there shouldn't be one.

From the punky spikiness of, "She's My Baby," to the scuzzy fuzzy drone of, "The Stroller," This Is How We Burnpulls itself up by the bootstraps and comes up with a classic lo-fi record that should have been recorded in 1998 but somehow found itself in 2010. It might not be pretty, but This Is How We Burnis a fun listen and Jaill have come up with potentially the indie pop record of the summer.