Marinero, is the project of Jess Sylvester, who will release their new album, La La La, on February 14th via Hardly Art Records. Ahead of the album’s arrival, the artist has shared “Cruz.”

Named both for the city that helped shape it and the sophisticated pop it contains, La La La is multivalent and endlessly lush. The album was recorded at Savannah Studios in Los Angeles and co-produced by Jess Sylvester and Jason Kick, featuring contributions from Chicano Batman’s Eduardo Arenas and labelmates Chris Cohen and Shana Cleveland (La Luz). Weaved throughout these 12 songs are motivational anthems about self-acceptance and playful numbers about flirting through food, shaping a set rich with humor, empathy, and encouragement.

Sylvester, born to parents of Mexican and Irish-American descent who settled in San Francisco, has sometimes encountered preconceived notions of his sound and style that aren’t correct. On La La La, he simultaneously steps into and out of those preconceptions, singing tracks above salsa in joyous Spanish or pondering the dynamics of the Hollywood Ten and blacklists above mysterious lap steel and teasing trumpet. His identity should now be clear: He is a Californian, making music shaped by the diversity of encounters and experiences that are a central part of that state’s fabric. Never before has he presented himself so fully and unabashedly on tape as with La La La, an album Sylvester built with new inspirations to deliver new charms.

On Marinero’s new album La la La:

As Jess Sylvester finished his Hardly Art debut as Marinero in the fall of 2020, he realized it was time for a change. Sylvester grew up in Marin County, on the doorstep of San Francisco. It was a nurturing community for a high-school punk with a pompadour and, later, for a sober songwriter with a proclivity for moody psychedelia. But he wanted to be challenged and inspired by a new setting and scenario around strangers who prompted him to approach his music in unexpected ways. So in September 2020, as the world continued to reel in lockdown, Sylvester headed several hours south to Los Angeles, a city that, despite the relative proximity, the film buff knew largely from classic and cult films situated there. When he arrived, he kept digging into that cinematic past—Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, with John Williams’ classic theme, or even the 90s classics featuring Edward James Olmos. They shaped his understanding of his new town just as it began to open.

This is one pillar of the multivalent and endlessly lush La La La, Marinero’s new album about sobriety, identity, and fantasy that is playfully named both for the city that helped shape it and the sophisticated pop it contains. Sylvester wrote about characters outside of himself, whether considering the heroine reckoning with her own version of keeping clean or the screenwriters whose work was deemed communist simply as a political convenience. He linked those songs with motivational anthems about self-acceptance and playful numbers about flirting through food, shaping a 12-song set rich with humor, empathy, and encouragement.

Recorded with a musical hero (and labelmate) of his, Chris Cohen, “Sea Changes” feels like sunshine breaking through dark clouds, as Sylvester acknowledges the newfound confidence and clarity in a friend who has stepped away from destructive habits. “Sea changes, smooth sailing/In your wake/There’s something about you now,” sings Sylvester, the son of a sailor from Massachusetts who is an unabashed fan of wordplay and nautical jokes, in a moment as bright as a drive along the California coast. Laced with harp and jeweled with Wurlitzer, “Dream Suite” is a love song for the down and out, for those struggling with letting go of their past in search of a brighter future. “Take a chance on something new,” he sings, his voice gliding for a high note like he’s reaching out to grab someone’s hand. “Just keep holding on.”

Pre-order La La La HERE