Upset The Rhythm presents…
JO PASSED
Thursday 25 October
The Victoria, 451 Queensbridge Rd, Dalston, London, E8 3AS
7.30pm | £7 | https://www.wegottickets.com/event/441850
JO PASSED sound
like a messed-up Beatles, one where Lennon & McCartney reunite in a
parallel 1980’s having discovered Can, Neu! and Sonic Youth. The band’s new
album on Sub Pop, ‘Their Prime’, demonstrates the band’s timeless knack for
dreamy melodies – chord progressions that sound like they were created in a
land far, far away. Lyrically, however, it’s imbued with a philosophical
longing for answers to questions that have resurfaced for the first time since
the explosion of counterculture. Frontman Jo Hirabayashi is crucially aware of
the world around him crumbling, yet he’s not lost sight of his sense of fun.
His approach to the album was to create a collage record of everything
he’s inspired by. The last track ‘Places Please’ is his attempt to make Grouper
dine out with Frank Ocean, whereas ‘Undemo’ enquires about Leonard Cohen
joining This Heat. Jo, along with his friend and drummer Mac Lawrie, moved
across the country from Vancouver to Montreal and back again. The two would
play shows in Montreal and eventually tour the far right corner of North
America. Upon Jo’s return to the west coast, multi-instrumentalist Bella Bébé
officially joined the band in January of 2016, expanding Jo Passed from trio to
a full quartet. Multimedia artist Megan-Magdalena Bourne began working with Jo
Passed on a video project for the song ‘Rage’ (from the Out EP). This
creative partnership would eventually lead to her taking on the role of bassist
for the band.
‘Their Prime’ is a record about identity and the loss
of time that happens as a direct consequence of being in the city with nowhere
to rent, no time outside of employment and no realistic expectations to live up
to. It encompasses that fear of being beyond the glory years, the most
creatively fruitful period of one’s life. Those years were lost to contemporary
struggles for working relationships, home, identity and space. “It’s me owning
my worst nightmare,” he admits. “A lot of the Jo Passed project has been about
confronting fears. I was afraid to move away from Vancouver to Montreal on my
own. Afraid to leave musical relationships I had. Afraid to bare the full
responsibility of a project. I’ve been putting out records and not ones
anyone’s necessarily heard. Being open about those fears is a good way of
dealing with them.” You can hear the frustrations and the jitters in the
crashing loud-and-quiet motifs throughout the album’s twelve tracks, which
offer up a patchwork quilt of sound, similar to Faust’s ‘IV’ or
‘Red Medicine’ by Fugazi.
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