Local Review: Jwalking — Demo 2024

Local Music Reviews

Jwalking
Demo 2024
Julia’s War Records
Street: 12.28.24
Jwalking = My Bloody Valentine + Sonic Youth

Jwalking’s debut EP, Demo 2024, is a mere three tracks long, so it’s a little on the short end. This brevity paired with the musical uniformity between the songs makes the record an uncertain indicator of where Jwalking might go next. However, I think it could very well prove to be the first in a long series of scrumptiously sulky albums I’ll end up streaming on repeat.

To the EP’s credit, it knows it’s short, so it immediately buries the listener in a chasmic casket of shoegaze. Track one, “Slide,” opens with the screeching of amp feedback while singer and guitarist Parviz Faiz plucks minor chords from what sounds like the bottom of a well. Soon, bassist Connor Beazley and drummer Erin Moore come in with a relaxed rhythm that would be right at home in a seedy lounge or roadhouse. 

After a few measures, Faiz begins to sing. Or maybe “mutter” is a better word. Whatever Kevin Shields does, it’s that. This makes the lyrics mostly unintelligible, but the few words that do come through (I’m pretty sure he says “hellcat with no headlights” somewhere in there) receive a lot of enigmatic gravitas, like the sparse details of a nightmare you barely remember. 

Faiz clearly isn’t trying to hand us coherent ideas or a narrative to follow — unless it’s an abstract and disjointed narrative à la David Lynch (RIP). He just wants to abduct us into a heavy mood. 

From this somber opening, the song swells into a grungy tantrum wherein the guitar takes on a blistering flange effect and the drums detonate like firecrackers. This intermission is a little more like Dirty than Loveless, and it effectively freights the listener out of the song’s initial malaise and into a cathartic rage. It doesn’t last long, though, and the track slowly peters out to end with a plaintive chord strike.

The next two songs, “Lemon” and “Dreamhouse,” follow a very similar formula: mumbled lyrics (though Faiz treats us to some visceral screams in “Dreamhouse”), sullen rhythms and distortion cranked to 11. The band also repeats a handful of musical themes with minor variations across the tracks. For example, the arpeggios in “Dreamhouse” are remarkably similar to those in “Slide.” The effect of this saminess isn’t necessarily bad, but it does make Demo 2024 feel less like a three-track EP and more like a nine-minute song. 

Still, far from overstaying its welcome, the EP actually left me wanting more of the same. A lot more. So much more that I wouldn’t be surprised if the band notices a small bump in their listening statistics from how many times I’ve streamed the whole EP back-to-back.  

I also want to mention the cover art, which hearkens to a long tradition of album covers that look like they were doodled in a notebook (see Dookie, This Old Dog and St. Elsewhere). In muted colors and frenetic lines, it depicts a city complete with buildings, billboards and bickering people. It feels a little prosaic at first, but when you look closer, you start to notice disturbing elements. Why is someone lying on the ground? Who is the nonplussed giant surveying the chaos like God? And from whose shower drain did the immense wad of hair come from? 

Like the EP itself, these artistic details evoke uneasy paranoia and discombobulated sorrow in equal measure.

Demo 2024 is available to stream on Bandcamp, Apple Music and Spotify, and you can follow Jwalking on Instagram at @jwalking.slc to get notified about their upcoming live shows and new releases. —Joe Roberts

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