by Matty McPherson (@ghostplanetmatt)
In 2017 when Saddle Creek signed Young Jesus, the LA-by-way-of-Chicago quartet, it was the result of a boisterous live performance in support of the then self-issued self-titled release. The label reissued the album and the quartet proceeded to make two more albums, The Whole Thing is Just There and Welcome to Conceptual Beach. To describe them as heady treatises would be an underselling. On all three of these albums, the quartet found a guiding light in improvisation, philosophy, and a scribbled mural journal of an underground canon where post-rock hadn’t quite become tethered to just crescendos. Mutable and adaptable, yet few listened to their trio of releases on the label.
For those who did though, well Young Jesus sort of became a guiding light. We were drawn to the musical omnibus as much as John Rossiter’s evolving and dense delivery; both transcendent and unvarnished, the raw deal when it came to indie. Each release seemed to be continually moving towards a stage of grace that would be fought for ruthlessly, tooth and nail. Rossiter was never one to leave a stone unturned. On Young Jesus’ madcapper finale, “Storm,” we traveled back to ‘95–not just to nab a copy of Jeff Buckley’s Grace that’d come in handy later, but to witness a sibling pact and origin story fused out of a near-nervous breakdown. This was a bonafide MO based on attempting to find an answer to Rosseitier’s quandaries “is there a way to fix up the ground? To the way it was? To write Eloise in the dust? To be everything all at once?” Heady stuff. By 2020, Rosseitier had a simplified realization to these quandaries, “I want to be around and living”.
Today, Shepherd Head arrives built from that reaction, as much as a series of contextual factors around the project. The near-28 minute album is the latest in a more maverick, singular-songwriter emphasis (that seems to have taken hold on Saddle Creek writ large). This is not exactly a self-conscious decision or predetermined outcome. It’s just that the 4-piece that refined each other and the improvisational methodology reached a limit, perhaps a temporary one. It’s still one that finds Rossiter solo as he once was on Grow/Decompose. This time around though, Rossiter is nearly a decade removed from that work, with over five years in the Los Angeles area and access to DAW editing software amongst ample ideas and collaboration. Over eight tracks, he maintains steadfastness to the core DNA of Young Jesus: heartfelt curiosity and radical honesty. All the while, a re-envisioning of the project moves featherweight pop-chameleon instincts to the forefront. Even if it is only slightly longer than two previous-era longforms, this is seriously as expansive as with anything they toyed with.
There were glimpses amongst the edges of Welcome to Conceptual Beach just how far the project could sound almost-pop or electronic. A bleepy breakdown suggested cyborg improv; “Pattern Doubt” had flourishes of a progressive yacht rock; the last three minutes of “Meditations” featured a fleet bout of swift, healing almost-drum n’ bass. Shepherd Head is in all honesty, nearly an album based entirely around the piano (or sometimes, a stray guitar). This release could be imagined unplugged, but doesn’t settle for such. Rossiter truly found a greater capacity to mend piano with drum machines, synthesizers, and digital effects and come out with a more organic feel than before; a lived-in fleet of quiet anthems and pop ponderings. It says a LOT about the album that is going to unfold when you open with a track (“Rose Eater”) as vast as Blue Nile’s “The Downtown Lights,” while basing it around a piano as vulnerably blunt as Mark Hollis’ on his album opener, “The Colour of Spring”. Even with a laptop microphone and computer effects (that he even mentioned evoked Enya), Rossiter is anything but elusive. He is still talking bluntly and openly. “Rose Eater” is an admission of defeat, concisely describing running “away from disagreements and abandoned older friends,” that makes you wonder how one rebuilds in the wake.
It’s a brilliant counter to Tomberlin’s feature on the hushed, near-indie gospel pop of “Ocean,” where digital drum loops skip like stones on the water and apparitions suggest echoes of community; itself a foreshadow of Rossiter’s subtle songwriting prowess and bildungsroman lyrical approach to this album. Considering how Conceptual Beach had stemmed from using DIY spaces to brainstorm imagined communities, Shepherd Head is at its most revelrous when Rossiter turns to a subtle dance music that can flourish in those spaces, as much as chill out rooms. Arriving at those points often just happens with a turn on a dime. Such is with the piano cut “Johno,” a track of two distinct sides: one near-Tom Waits/Fiona Apple style Bone Machinery and a mousy four on the floor with claps. The title track layers together a marching bombast before stripping everything down to an honest-to-god recorder solo and wailing of a dog. A frank reminder of how Shepherd Head is legitimately a sonic journal that is never entirely alone.
What grips me about those types of cutaways, voices, or other apparitions Rossiter throws into his mixes is that they are less improvisational and more capturing the verité that comes with life recordings. It’s a style of absolutely personalized pop music that shares more in common with emo-ambient or LA-based Leaving Records “all-genre” approach to sonics than I’d ever anticipate. Side B digs deeper into that, with knockout opener “Gold Line Awe”. Here, Jamie Renee Williams’ delivers her treatise, “Stagnation,” filled with observations of the state amongst notions of mindful therapy; all the while a revelrous ecstasy as a four on the floor beat and throbbing bass, slowly build. By the back half its a full on dance track, with that soulful piano evoking an imagined ideal of Chicago House. Rossiter provides his own spoken word on “Satsuma”–a realization of living and dying in space and time if there ever was one. All of sudden though, “Satsuma” comes crashing with the frantic percussive clicks of a footwork cut mended with a piano washed in effects and a near symphony–a rush of an anthemic, mind-bending energy. “Believer” (feat. Arswain) may shockingly be the closest to an older approach of a Young Jesus track. The bleep’d production is still quite apparent, but Rossiter’s references to Judas and even that 2017-2020 era guitar tone allude back to Conceptual Beach.
By the time of “A Lake” though, Rossiter closes the circle in full. Returning down to just the piano with aquatic effects (as much as various haptics and sonic ephemera light their way through), he finds himself closer to a true human love that waits, flowing like a water beyond this mortal coil. “We could all ache together” he echoes off into the distance; an empathetic understanding of lived-in pain. Shepherd Head evokes its own meta reading–which Saddle Creek has had previous experience dating back to early 00s Rilo Kiley and Cursive. Yet, there’s been a quiet, if not unplanned focus in their post-2020 roster of albums that often feel like dialogues meant for private listens, single artists sharing a situated knowledge and catharsis. Rossiter’s approach easily weaves itself into that tapestry. Even for its sparse length, that becomes a strength, providing a sublime, beguiling replayability worth pondering.