Jaill
Traps
Sub Pop Records
Rating: 7.9

After a litany of self released LPs and EPs, Jaill got signed with the big guys over at Sub Pop Records… and the Milwaukee boys took their do-it-yourself sound with them.

There’s been a real surge of this DIY thing lately. I think for a lot of bands it means cranking the reverb, adding some fuzz and getting the vocals to just the right vacancy.There’s a lot of effort put into making something sound effortless. It’s sort of like buying a tie dye shirt or pre-ripped jeans. The look is there, but it’s not genuine. What’s great about Traps is that it is indeed genuine, they’re not clubbing you over the head with it.

Even after being signed, Jaill still insisted the album be recorded in head boy Vinnie Kircher’s basement with, as they say, “minimal gear and a control room of thrift store afghans”. The sound that came out of the homegrown recording isn’t lo-fi gar(b)age rock, it’s proper rock and roll with an element of casual and intentional imperfection.

It’s almost like Traps is a Pavement / Kinks lovechild. A track like I’m Home for example has a real attitude, a sort of 90s offhandedness with some Malkmus-esque high notes thrown in. Then you hear something like Everyone’s a Bitch which has perfectly distorted guitars and “ooh”ing vocal harmonies and it’s just like a classic 60s pop song.Jaill have got a vintage good boy sound but they give less of a shit…they’re tight without
being uptight.

The beauty of Jaill is that they’ve come from years of self motivated record releases.They’re not trying to impress, they’re not trying to overcomplicate, they’re simply putting out the music that they like to make in the way they like to make it. The stage might be bigger now, but that basement they still record in is the same size and there is no room down there for filler.

By Ali Haberstroh