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I’ve been covering the work of Joshua Aubrey Jackson (Fiery Crash, Summerooms, Make Sure) for the last eight years. His work has gone from alt-folk with a predilection for fuzzed-out guitars to full-fledged twinkly-guitar emo to sophisticated indie-pop. His latest record as Make Sure, Ninjutsu, cements his growing reputation for being an indie-pop songwriter with a keen ear, impressive arranging skills, and an interesting pen. This record is Jackson’s most complex statement yet in every regard.

On Ninjutsu, Jackson shows off a fine-tuned melodic sense. This record is packed with memorable melodies: the line “So here’s the point / when the watchman falls asleep” on “Girl Drummer” could be a throwaway line for many bands, but it becomes an earworm (despite being only sung once) and turning point in the song. “Sometimes a Man Has Nothing to Say” has a drawn-out chorus that sticks in the mind. “Japanese Bonus Track” has a similarly powerful chorus that evokes Ben Gibbard’s vocal patterns, but also adds memorable verse structures. Yet none of these melodies are theatrical or “poppy”; they are earnest, low-key, and well-turned. They stick not through fast tricks, but through hard work in making good songs.

That intense effort extends to the arrangements: it is clear that an incredible attention to detail went into the instrumentation. Jackson’s warm, wistful vibe is present on every song on the record due to the detailed construction of each instruments’ tone. There are no hard edges on this record: acoustic guitars burble, pad synths enter slowly, percussion rattles without being brittle, and Jackson’s vocals are always just above a sigh. He even manages to make the distorted guitar of “Girl Drummer” thick without being abrasive. The guitars thud appropriately, fitting into the vibe of the record as a moment of great disappointment amid the nostalgic feelings. “Is That You Ninjutsu,” “The Day That I Moved Out,” and “Sometimes a Man Has Nothing to Say” are particularly deft on this front. “Okay Sea” stretches a mood out over a long period of time (7 minutes!) and gets special notice on that front. It’s truly a beautiful-sounding record, and for the sonics alone it should not be missed.

Yet it’s not all music: the lyrics here are notable. Jackson’s lyricism has always been long on tenderness and wistfulness. On this record, he hones that to a fine point. Opener “Is That You Nunjitsu” draws parallels to the brilliant Transatlanticism, creating a powerful homage/comparison that probably goes under the radar for all but the most dedicated Death Cab fan: the narrator remembers a lost love by finding dog hair in the backseat of a car (instead of the glove box, as on “Title and Registration”); there’s a sea between the narrator and his lost love (“Transatlanticism”), there’s a dinner party going on (perhaps “Death of an Interior Decorator”?). (Also, the guitar tone/melody seems to evoke “Transatlanticism,” but that could be me reading too much here.) From there, Jackson spreads his lyrical wings in a variety of directions. “The Day That I Moved Out” is a nostalgic yet specific rumination on the titular event; “Sometimes a Man Has Nothing to Say” is another rumination on leaving home, but this time it’s about the silence of not knowing how to respond to a lover back home. Switching gears, “Get Moving” is a gentle hymn of praise. The lyrics here are earnest and unadorned, but almost all show a pop of a unique vision: an unusual word, a specific phrase, an unusual tack, a distinctive emphasis.

Make Sure’s Ninjutsu is a polished, beautiful record. It’s the product of many years of learning the craft, and all the bits of effort expended over many years (and many previous releases) show. The melodies shine, the arrangements soar, and the lyrics land. It’s top-shelf indie-pop, the sort of thing that you hear once and want to hear again immediately. It’s fall / winter music (see Jackson’s project Summerooms for the spring / summer music), and I love that about it. Break out your wool sweater and your sonic sweater: Ninjutsu. Highly recommended.

Today I am absolutely thrilled to bring you news of an EP split between Make Sure and Ezekiel Songs. Longtime followers of this blog will certainly know Make Sure (and its predecessor band Fiery Crash, and its side project Summerooms), whom I cover often. This is the first time I’ve covered Ezekiel Songs, but not the first time I’ve covered the musicians behind the project: Kevin and Chris Skillern (Scales of Motion). But my reIationship with the Skillerns goes back even farther than covering Scales. I don’t get personal on this blog too often, but some things require a bit of backstory.

Back in 2002, my friend Brent said “I am starting a band and I play guitar.” I said, “Well, I can learn to play bass.” We recruited a drummer and called ourselves Tragic Landscape. (Throughout the history of this band, I kept trying to change the name, but to no avail.) After a brief Coldplay/The Fray period, we settled into an art-rock/post-rock/post-metal amalgam that was extremely out of step with everything else in the Tulsa scene. The band consisted of an emo singer who played bass riffs out of Ben Folds songs, an art-school guitarist, and a metalhead drummer. We also later recruited a jazz keyboardist/clarinetist. The guitarist was also a saxophone player and would sometimes swap the guitar for the sax and duet with the clarinet. Over metal drums. We were weird.

Around this time, emo was cool. Very cool. Lots of good emo bands running around (and one good post-rock band called the Programme, who were way out of our league). One of those good emo bands was Scales of Motion. I admired Scales of Motion because among all our peers, they seemed the most like they would actually like our music. They were also Christians and that meant a lot to me, as a Christian playing music. So, I put on my best music networking face and asked Scales of Motion if we could play a show together.

They said yes.

I was delighted out of my mind. We did the show and had a blast. Scales even did at least one more show with us where we were separately put on the same bill. It was awesome. I have always had a spot in my heart for Scales because they, among pretty much everyone else in the Tulsa music scene, kinda took a flyer on us. And Scales, as I mentioned above, was the brainchild of Kevin and Chris Skillern.

And now, all-time IC fave Make Sure is doing a split with the Skillerns under their Ezekiel Songs moniker. Where Scales of Motion was a noisy-but-thoughtful rock band, Ezekiel Songs is quiet-and-thoughtful indie-pop outfit. The patterned distorted electric guitar riffs have been traded for patterned acoustic guitar work. The backdrop has shifted to a peaceful, comforting frame: “Author of Love” is a bright, autumnal piece featuring snare rim-hits, shaker, sleigh bells, muted kick, and gently thrumming bass guitar work below the acoustic guitar and delicate electric guitar work. Kevin Skillern’s high tenor vocals gently soar over the mix, capping off the track in a delightful way. The lyrics are a plea for help, healing, and justice in a troubled time; what could be more beautiful?

Skillern then covers Make Sure’s “Getaway Car,” amping up the dreamy qualities of the track. The track shows how excellently matched these two artists are: the autumnal, acoustic-and-banjo approach is a highly complementary as well as complimentary fit with the original. There are also subtle differences: there’s some more staccato elements interspersed and accentuated in this track than in Make Sure’s (the banjo will do that to you, no matter how kindly you tap the strings). Yet the overall vibe feels dreamy due to inclusion of melodic percussion (marimba?), the vocal choices, and subtle arpeggiator work. It’s a great track.

Make Sure’s new contribution to the EP is “Hearing Yourself,” which is a very punchy track that is on the louder side of the Make Sure oeuvre. It’s not quite pop-punk, what with the twinkly top lines, but there’s a good amount of charging guitars that give this heft. The bridge is quiet and relaxed, giving a good break from the loud proceedings. The track seems to be an “outgrowing this town” song, which is a good fit in a pop-punk-esque frame. (The ka-chunk at the end of the track is very pop-punk.)

Make Sure’s cover of Ezekiel Songs’ “Coming Home” has a solid groove to it, as Josh Jackson ties stomping percussion and winding acoustic guitar together into a fun line. It has some ’90s-era chill Switchfoot vibes: rock approaches without actually going all the way to rocking.

All four of these tracks are highly entertaining, excellently developed pieces of autumnal indie-pop. You’ve got quiet and loud versions of the form here, so there’s diversity throughout. But overall, the quartet is highly consistent and much more cohesive than most splits are. As a bonus: you’re getting to support the Skillerns, whom I highly respect as people and musicians. Highly recommended.

This split comes supported by Renew the Arts and officially drops on December 4.

Anna Meredith‘s Fibs has haunted me for months. I have listened to it over and over, and to say I have found it enigmatic yet electrifying is underselling it. The compositions are by turns confrontational and comforting, abrasive and then warm. Meredith is a composer, a person with a unique sonic vision for a collective of musicians, and the form which she has chosen here is a wild arpeggiated-synth-pop-meets-post-rock-meets-brass-band amalgam. The chord changes are very composerly; they don’t go where the pop ear wants them to go, but after several listens it starts to feel like a necessary shift, a situation that couldn’t have been any different.

Take highlight “Inhale Exhale.” It starts off as a throwback ’80s arch-synth-pop jam. The vocal melody is beautiful and catchy; the lyrics are a compelling second-person statement of a friend suggesting that someone is lying to themself about things. But the chorus takes a hard left, moving out of a traditional pop space into a wordless ah section with an unusual chord shift and different mood. It’s a stark contrast. The rest of the song fleshes out these two moods/structures, building an unresolvable tension that is so engaging. “Killjoy” leans more over to the pop side of the spectrum, evoking texturally ambitious synth-pop bands of the last twenty years with great melodies. “Sawbones” goes full composer, creating a frantic, mindbending synth-pop composition that relies heavily on the sonically disorienting shepherd’s tone for its structure.

“Ribbons” is Meredith’s best interpretation of a ballad; “My goth twin, she sings / a song from past” she sweetly sings as a spacious, spartan landscape with tuba (!) gives Meredith space to effectively draw the listener into the world. This is a truly unique record, like nothing I’ve ever heard. Highly recommended.

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One of my favorite records last year was Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy Reconfigured. Major EDM musicians took Daft Punk’s dark cyberpunk vision and amped up every aspect of it: more distortion, more big melodies, more gritty stuff, more techno thunder, etc. Fernando Lagreca‘s Infamous fits exactly into that vision: this is dancefloor-ready cyberpunk with lots of mystery, intrigue, and aggression. It filters all of those things into an easily-approachable amalgam; it doesn’t move into any of the subcultures it could by amping up any of its individual elements.

Instead, Lagreca’s work is accessible without being watered down and catchy without being pop songs in disguise. In other words, this is a top-shelf techno record that lots of different people in lots of different subcultures could get into. The four-on-the-floor “Galactic” is a great place to start as synths wander in and out of a locked-down-tight dance beat. “Tears of the Future” amps up the spacey aspects, drawing on arpeggiator sounds that immediately call up spaceship thoughts. Doomy bass heightens the drama. “Lone Condition” is a spy thriller that wouldn’t be out of place on RAC’s Master Spy soundtrack. Ultimately, it’s a totally satisfying, very excited collection of tracks that actually work together as a record while producing bangers. Good work, everyone! Highly recommended.

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Summerooms is the immensely talented Joshua Aubrey Jackson’s side-project–his main jam is Make Sure (and used to be Fiery Crash). Summerooms is the place where he experiments with his main sound (a nostalgic mix of acoustic folk, indie-pop, and emo). In The Heat of Summer, he tries out an enormous number of new ideas–not all work, but a whole lot do.

The core of his sound is still an acoustic guitar, but the tinkering runs wild on everything from there on. The title track is a Springsteen-ian epic with iconic snare action, underpinning synth, and a sense of reckless abandon that characterizes all the best Springsteen jams. (He tempers the Springsteen comparisons with stop-on-a-dime quiet sections.) “Turkey Vulture” is a bombastic riff-rocker that appears early in the record and lets the listener know that this is going to be a bit of an adventure.

“Lindsey Whatsherface” is one of the best tracks Jackson’s ever written, a twinkly, dreamy piece that calls up the best of American Football-style twinkle, Death Cab for Cutie-style indie-pop, and more. It’s led by Preslea Elliott’s subtle, careful vocals, which are the perfect foil to the arrangement. Similarly, “Pull Apart” is another highlight in the Jackson oeuvre, a breakup duet with Samantha Eason that shows off all of his indie-pop craft, arranging chops, engineering skills, and big heart. Eason’s emotive vocals are lovely, and the track is just front-to-back gorgeous.

Other tracks land with less force: opener “Red Sun” brings forward a great idea that doesn’t quite capitalize on its initial promise; “Hard to Sleep Hot” has a lyrical set that doesn’t quite connect, especially the initial couplet; the overall record feels long toward the end. The scope itself is part of the experiment–this is an explicit concept record, following the emotional contours of Psalm 32 (and also perhaps an on-again off-again relationship?). There are clear shout-outs at points, but overall the length and scope of the record make it hard to connect all the dots.

Still, the record sounds beautiful: Jackson is an expert engineer and songwriter, and even the “lows” are good songs if considered out of context. As Jackson continues growing as a songwriter and works with larger conceptual frames like these, I have no doubt that his deft touch with the other aspects of songcraft will mature as well. If nothing else, you’ve got to hear “Lindsey Whatsherface” and “Pull Apart.” They rule.

Joshua Aubrey Jackson has always been about mood, whether as Fiery Crash, Summerooms, or now as part of a small outfit in Make Sure. The sentimental, lush, reverberant indie-pop that he offers in Walk Home Instead is his current apex of his pretty-laser-focused goal of great moods: my wife asked me to turn the album back on because it made her feel “homey.” And if you had no more review than that, I hope you know that her recommendation is a very high bar indeed.

But that’s not all the review you get here! The 96-second titular opener is a beautiful instrumental intro to the album, setting the stage excellently. There’s delicate electric guitar with just enough reverb on it to give it a wistful feel intertwining with subtle acoustic guitar and chiming piano melodies. The depth of Jackson’s recording experience is evident, as the album is recorded and produced magnificently; this is just the sign of things to come. “Deal Breakers” is the first full song of the record, and it is incredible: Jackson’s vocals are kind, gentle, and yet yearning on top of carefully developed indie-pop orchestration. This song is like a warm shirt on a cool day that fits perfectly. You can sing this song, or you can just let it enfold you; it’s the sort of work that fits beautifully wherever it may lie.

Elsewhere Jackson continues his excellent work. “Home This Weekend” features the lovely line “I don’t feel any older / other than just an ache in my knee”; it looks pedestrian when written out, but it’s sung with such care and attention to detail that the line is a standout of the song and the album. “After School” features drums more prominently than in other places, but they’re very carefully recorded and mixed drums to fit with the lush, wistful mood of this instrumental track and the overall album. That track leads directly into “I Thought I Could Do Better Than You,” which has faint echoes of Relient K in its lyrical approach and vocal line construction. It’s the most straightforward of the songs here in terms of the pop realms of his songwriting; there’s a lot more snap in this one, and fewer wistful bits (even though the lyrics are directly laced with regrets here, more so than others). The coda of the song makes me think of Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie (that’s never anything but a good thing). In case the thread has been lost: the moods here are just so, so great, no matter which song you pick.

There is a huge amount to enjoy in Walk Home Instead. Joshua Aubrey Jackson’s vision for the sonic palette of the record is clear and fully-recognized. The songs are tight and beautifully-written. The performances are solid, and the production is immaculate. Walk Home Instead is a truly beautiful record in just about every way a record can be (check the gorgeous album art, too!). If you’re an indie-pop fan and haven’t heard of Make Sure yet, you need to do so as soon as possible and treat your ears. Joshua Aubrey Jackson remains the country’s best kept secret in songwriting, and he’s only getting better; you’d do well to get on the train as quickly as possible. —Stephen Carradini