Today Jimmy Whispers helps to close out the Summer of 2015 with his video for “I Get Lost In You In The Summertime,” directed by Jessica and Alexa Viscius. Just for fun, see how many Chicago musicians you can identify in the background of these scenes. Jimmy Whispers released his debut LP, Summer in Pain, back in March and launches another mini-tour tonight which includes a stop at CMJ and will conclude with a hometown headlining show to date at Lincoln Hall on Nov. 4.

“Who is this Jimmy Whispers,” you’ll ask yourself the first time you hear him, whether he’s leaping out at you metaphorically from your speakers or leaping out at you literally from the stage during a live performance fraught with physicality and emotion.

Jimmy Whispers is a walking, talking, singing, and dancing bundle of paradoxes. Greatest among them, perhaps, is his ability to transform the most seemingly basic melodies sketched out hastily with an electric organ on an iPhone voice message into such a profound racket, or how this dirty weirdo from Chicago managed to insinuate himself into the tradition of great American sentimental balladeers.

His music will make you laugh and cry and dance and, unless you’re terminally jaded and hardhearted, it’ll make you genuinely feel something. And no matter how many times you listen you’ll keep asking yourself, for a multitude of reasons, “Who is this fucking guy?”

A word from Jimmy on Summer In Pain:
“Summer In Pain, I cannot explain. There was so much more beneath the surface than the pain I was romanticizing. The world is ending and I am dying and this is really happening. This moment is the closest we have ever been to the future. There are things I will never understand but I hear a heartbeat crying out through the distortion in this burnt out fucked up universe and I can feel it. This is our summer in hell together! This ain’t no Toys R’Us cuz Jimmy don’t play so get the fuck out of the kiddie pool. This is apocalyptic love sickness.”

TOUR DATES:

09/14 Kansas City, MO @ The Union
09/15 St. Louis, MO @ Fortune Teller Bar
09/17 Detroit, MI @ PJ’s Lager House
09/25 Iowa City, IA @ Blue Moose
09/26 Cedar Falls, IA @ Octopus
09/28 Chicago, IL @ The Promontory
10/08 Carlton, MN @ The Cave (Carlton College)
10/17 Brooklyn, NY @ Palisades (Moniker Records CMJ Showcase)
11/04 Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall