Sometimes I think I take music too personally. I find myself judging others all too quickly when I hear their music tastes; it can make or break my impression of them. I'll give people a little bit of slack if their choices aren't really my thing, but other times the groups they list are so god-awful that I'm actually offended that they enjoy it. It's mostly the pointless derivative bands clogging up any already-too-full sub-genre that upset me, merely with the fact that they're allowed to play at all. But so goes my overly critical mindset.
Anyway, Jukebox the Ghost was set up to fall not far from this stereotype. This young trio hails from Washington, DC, playing poppy and simple indie rock with heavy piano use. Seems like an easy description for a slew of new bands today. After a self-released EP, Jukebox released their debut full-length, Let Live and Let Ghosts. I came across this album almost by accident, and it seemed intriguing enough to give it a few spins.
After a few full listens, I'm pleasantly surprised. Their sound is a little hard to place besides the description above, but everything flows in a quirky way without straying too far from simple melodies. The instruments are used very well in relation to each other, allowing a lot of depth behind the basic note patterns. There are a lot of starts and stops within each song, which actually feels more bouncy rather than spastic.
The sound doesn't necessarily feel new to my ears, I can hear a lot of structural similarities with the Detachment Kit specifically. But there is certainly a more experimental touch to Jukebox that keeps me listening. On the surface, Let Live and Let Ghosts appears to be musical fluff, but as the album goes on, they explore various types of progressions without seeming pretentious. You can feel the time spent on each song when you hear how many parts are in each one.
So, all in all, I certainly wasn't offended by this release. I was expecting to brush off Jukebox the Ghost relatively easily, but that didn't quite work. This album definitely has a few hooks, and the style switches every song. And it doesn't hurt that a few tracks reminded me of the recently-deceased Piebald. I'm not sure this is anything to make a huge fuss about, but it doesn't deserve to be avoided either.
