jennylee - "right on!"

picture via FanPop

We all have that one band that we think speak solely to us. We connect with their music and nobody else does, and then when we finally see them live, we realize we, in fact, are not their only fans, but it seems 1,500 other people feel the same exact way. One of these bands for me, and a lot of other people, was Warpaint. A band you could listen to alone in your bedroom drinking a glass of wine and deciding whether or not you’re going to go out and get into a shit ton of trouble with your girlfriends, drink up until you pass out, or break into your ex-boyfriends house and write obscenities in lipstick on his bathroom mirror. They’re fusion of dream wave vocals and hazy guitars make you feel like you’ve entered some dark version of Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole. The sweet sounding vocals carry you through, overlaying the dark undertones of the off-kilter chords, making it OK to have thoughts about tricking people into loving you then taking everything they own.

It’s always a little exciting and nerve-wracking when a member from a beloved band goes solo. It’s exciting because obviously the more music the better, and everyone always wants to know the styles of specific people in those bands. But then again it’s nerve-wracking because it poses the questions like “Why are you going solo, is the band breaking up?”, the classic “Are you guys in a fight??” and of course the impending concern of “Do you need a recommendation of a good therapist?”. In this specific case, it’s Warpaint’s Jenny Lee Lindberg that has gone ahead on her own and made a solo album. We know and love her 1: because she’s almost identical to her older actress sister Shannyn who was just about every indie boy’s fantasy back in the early 2000’s and 2: because she’s one of the best bass guitarists we have in the indie band world right now. Her gutting bass lines alone can make you want to get out of bed and either rob a bank or get yourself into some kind of illicit trouble.

Now, she’s not only changing from Jenny Lee Lindberg into her persona jennylee, she's also showing us a side of her that we can fall even more in love with. Bringing us the joy of her bass, among other elements, it’s a headfirst dive into pure new-wavey shoe gaze. She first released an album teaser video where we can take a quick journey through her sound. Letting us in on her tracks “never”, “boom boom” and “he fresh” all behind a grainy, VHS-type filming of her playing instruments, laughing, dancing around in a ballet studio and giving us the full lo-fi dreamscape. But don’t worry, she’s not going light on us. She still has the guttural chords and song titles to keep us in high hopes of sadly dark, dystopian Los Angeles. And luckily for us, she rallied some good music troops to feature on her new LP, including, but not limited to, fellow Warpainter Stella Mozgawa, and Dan Elkan from Broken Bells.

She also released a full video for “Never” which looks like an 80’s or early 90’s homemade video, of her in the studio, her dancing in front of a mirror, and giving us a color scape and harsh angles that cater ever so perfectly to her music.

Check out her tracklist, and try to imagine what each and everyone is going to sound like:

01. blind
02. boom boom
03. never
04. long lonely winter
05. bully
06. riot
07. he fresh
08. offerings
09. white devil
10. real life

right on! is due out December 11th on Rough Trade Records.