Jay Som
Everybody Works
(Polyvinyl)
Polyvinyl has an impressive history in the area of quirky indie-pop, and though Melina Duterte’s bedroom pop sensation Jay Som isn’t so much eccentric, it’s certainly one of the best albums from the label. A complete DIY effort where all instruments, recordings and songwriting is handled by Duterte, who is just 22 years old, Jay Som’s distorted guitar rock, aching pop tunes, and lo-fi folk are complemented by influences like R&B, shoegaze and funk, but never in the traditional sense. Often sounding like the offspring of Liz Phair and Frank Black who is in tune with today’s version of dreamy rock, and, who, most importantly, can write songs you won’t soon forget, I feel pretty confident that if you don’t like the tune “1 Billion Dogs” well, you just don’t like music at all.
