Young Jesus will release their debut self-titled album for Saddle Creek, physically on February 23rd. The album is available digitally now. The band has also released a 10 minute video for their single “Feeling” which was directed by Jordan Epstein and singer-songwriter John Rossiter. Watch the video here. “The video is a stop motion animation/series of poems I made and wrote, a broadcast from an imagined and ethereal space I’ve been working within through various zines and recordings called Conceptual Beach.” Says Rossiter. “Along the Beach I hope to investigate confusion, complexity, and anxiety with playfulness and sincerity.”

Young Jesus, an indie rock quartet formed in Chicago and reformed in Los Angeles, looks to communicate the tensions between proximity and distance, chaos and order. On their upcoming record S/T, to be released by Saddle Creek, the band focuses on seemingly small moments in everyday life: phone calls with Mom, landscapes along the highway, crows in a tree. Yet with time these strange intimacies add up to a life. A life full of anxiety, confusion, sadness, joy, boredom, and ultimately wonder.

Young Jesus mixes the emotional intensity of bands like Slint, Pile, and Built To Spill with the quiet contemplation of Yo La Tengo, Mogwai, and Laughing Stock-era Talk Talk. They give themselves to moments of aggression and volume, balanced alongside near-silence.

Influenced by the writings of Donna Haraway, Timothy Morton, Wang An-Shih, Wang Wei, Joy Williams, and Marilynne Robinson, singer/songwriter John Rossiter hopes for a making-do with what we have, a sometimes wide-eyed learning process. Life may be too massive to grasp, but that does not mean we should shy away from it. Rather, Young Jesus tries to look toward the complexity and imperfection. “As ever, the questions Rossiter and co. raise are too big to expect any sort of clear answer, but Young Jesus offer a model of coping, a way to remain hopeful and human within their jaws” (Various Small Flames).

Rossiter states, “the ethos is to push each other to express things that are not common– like ideas of love and trust within friendships– through being extremely vulnerable and making mistakes. Hopefully those mistakes become framed as an important and necessary part of process. It’s about communication between four people. Hopefully it is the sound of four very good friends who want to let other people into that space.” These may be small things, but observed with thought and care they come to make the world of Young Jesus.

YOUNG JESUS IS:
John Rossiter (Guitar/Vocals)
Kern Haug (Drums)
Marcel Borbon (Bass)
Eric Shevrin (Keys/Vocals)