by Patrick Pilch (@pratprilch)
Famous Laughs is Jake Acosta. The Chicago-based polymath has recorded with countless projects and played in even more. He’s spent the past decade and a half gigging the DIY circuit while running both Teen River and Lake Paradise Records (Fran, m!nes, J Fernandez). Acosta’s deeply creative and humbly encouraging ethos has found him in the orbit of some of the best working songwriters and musicians in the city. His latest tape as Famous Laughs is an expansive installment in the project’s subversive and oft undersung discography. Total Icon is an incredibly rich listen, a record built to submerge listeners in the singular psych glaze of Acosta’s pleasantly zonked musical landscape.
Famous Laughs’ latest record is a bit of an anomaly, coming together amid Acosta’s pandemic isolation despite the musician’s historically collaborative impulses. In its solitude, Total Icon is a creative self-excavation, a record where Acosta trades material aspirations for musical visions. “Second to Some” is a brilliant reflection on the craft, discipline, fulfillment, and inspiration driving Total Icon. The song finds Acosta balancing self-criticism and creative truth as he croons, “Classicness Is contingent/On how hard you tried/To stop mistakes you wrote yourself.”
Acosta’s words are universal and specific, both heady and grounded. He keeps listeners on a string, casting them out only to steadily reel them back in. There are so many charming lyrical moments on Total Icon, silly-but-sincere one or two-liners juxtaposed with digable, existential musings. “It's been forever since/Nothing came to mind./Well, nothing came to mind,” Acosta sings on slugger jam “Kettle Morain,” later asking “What are you in the mood for/ Green Day or Sun Ra?”
Total Icon is remarkably paced: the music reveals itself. The present guitar work is something to admire - subversive melodies weave Acosta’s foggy-eyed psych into blooming six string sprawls where songs like “Radical Charm” and the title track unfold and implode in instrumental bliss. “Sleeping in the 80s” takes a more subdued approach, trading crescendoed outros for unplugged guitars that coalesce in a twilight-state lullaby.
For a musician where community and collaboration are at the forefront of creative approach, Total Icon is the wonderful result Acosta taking center stage. Famous Laughs embraces a warm and welcoming potency that becomes a sincere reflection of easily one of Chicago’s most underrated and overlooked heads.