Ryan Spencer of Jamaican Queens would rather not talk about his music.
What would he say about it, anyway? Here’s a few starters – super-heavy bass, heavy textures and heavy beats, strange and dynamic rhythms you can almost dance to and bumping, bendy, bombastic melodies pattering atop fuzzy sheens of bursting 808s and snaky synths with dark but droll lyrics to disarm the dancefloor huddlers.
But Spencer would rather talk about his tour with post-funk duo Passalacqua.
He’d rather talk about the bonkers-out-of-their-minds transvestites that he chilled with until four in the morning last week in Montreal, having just danced his ass off after JQ’s packed-loft-space performance that night. Or he’d rather talk about the Brooklyn Electronic Music festival that these paired Michigan bands toured through or maybe the he’d talk about the grimy Club Rap mix-tape he’s been rocking lately.
Spencer would probably rather talk about how he was hoping lo-fi-legendary goth-Americana troubadour Will Oldham might actually come to see their last show of the tour that night. When I ring up the Detroit singer/songwriter, he’s pacing some Louisville coffee shop, telling me he’s wearing another man’s socks, a bit under the weather, swigging his fourth cup of the day (on an empty stomach). But whaddya know – he tells me he just toasted a macchiato with the Oldham, a.k.a. Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Kentucky’s own!
If Spencer talked about his music, written/recorded/performed with Adam Pressley (both musicians formerly of locally loved /“coulda-been” quirk-rock quartet Prussia), then he’d quickly quip it to be a mutant melding of experimental pop with raw southern rap beats.
“But ask me in six months and I’ll probably tell you that all I listen to is country, so we’ll be a ‘country-band,’ then.”
Another former Prussian deemed JQ to be “the creepiest bubblegum-pop” he’d ever heard. So there you have it.
And that’s that – Spencer and Pressley (with drummer Ryan Clancy) are now one full year into this still new band but just wrapped their second major tour (their first one having aligned with Ypsi-trio Lightning Love). Three songs from their forthcoming full length (“Worm Food” – Feb. 26) are forecast to be cinematically realized for streamable online premiers throughout the winter.
So during our chat, it’s the last day of tour and, well, maybe it’s the four cups of coffee talking, but Spencer sounds quite spirited. He’s not sure how their eclectic electro-heavy aesthetic will play in what’s perceived as a folk-friendly bastion (i.e. Ypsi/Arbor/Mittenfest, etc). But this year, hopefully, can further bridge any lamented lingering genre-gaps.
“Worm Food” is a beguiling bust up of murky atmospherics and effervescent synth-textures coolly stirred into swaying grooves. Detached rhythmic rains decant Clancy’s live kit into sequenced beats while Pressley’s hip-hop sensibilities and stately guitar styling augments Spencer’s signature rasped-wailing, waving out sweet and swirly melodies stung with dark lyrical fare.
“It’s dark only if you let it be dark,” said Spencer, speaking not just of his songs but of the album’s title, an empowering motto suggesting: live life now – because once you’re dead, you’re just “worm food.”
“You can come to terms with it,” said Spencer, who admits to digging into some deeply existential exchanges post-shows with rapper Mister (a.k.a. Bryan Lackner of Passlacqua). “And then, just like Oldham or Morrisey, come to it in a comedic way, almost. Lyrically, I just like to keep things as honest as possible.”
Who wouldn’t be spirited, really, after their trip through Montreal and Brooklyn (the latter locale resulting in pleasingly packed shows bolstered by early blog-buzz already stirring for these local boys)?
It’ll be good to have them back home, though. “Worm Food” drops in about two months with the trio heading to SXSW soon after. We’ll see if they sound like a “country band” by then…
Photo by Doug Coombe
