When young bands employ a pleading, even emotional sound, that which results far too often sounds like emo, but somehow The Jaguar Club avoid such a dastardly fate on their impressive debut, And We Wake Up Slowly. The New York band honed their approach in tours up-and-down the whole East Coast in 2006 & 2007 before heading to the Catskills to write Wake Up, but the sound hews more towards the English grandeur of the alternative scene across the pond back in the eighties, before anyone shorted ‘emotional’ to ‘emo’ – yet still seems fresh.
After the titular intro, Wake Up manages to be both catchy and haunting on the interesting “Sleepwalking”, which also introduces The Jaguar Club’s first Anglophonics. However, it is a pressing nature, without going overboard, that really characterizes the record, a nature that helps ground the band’s grander aspirations on pieces like the following “Where No Wild Things Are”, as well as “Corks Pop”, “This Summer”, “Antarctica”, and finisher “Perfect Timing”. Any of those could be called the standout, but it is just maybe “Corks Pop”, with its ‘glasses raised at the end of the party’ that is the most memorable.
The Jaguar Club also nicely cross over into a more dance rhythm on “Blood Pressure” and “Out of the City”, the former like eighties New Wave-dance, the latter possessing a disco wa-wa. However, And We Wake Up Slowly doesn’t feel like a retread of New Wave or even of the New Wave-revival earlier this decade (actually, the only middling piece is the emo-plead “Future Sounds”…), as The Jaguar Club are lighter than the likes of Morrissey (QRO album review) or Interpol (QRO album review), catchier. There’s still space for at least one more interesting and original band from Brooklyn…
MP3 Stream: “Corks Pop”
