The Breakdown
Long time favourites here at the antipodean outpost of Backseat Mafia, Eora/Sydney band Jet City Sports Club craft the most bittersweet and shimmering pop songs around, and they have now collected together four singles and one new track in a new EP entitled ‘Every Single Dream’.
The band says of the EP:
The new EP is a collection of songs that are extensions of us, and the experiences being in this band has created. We named it Every Single Dream as it’s a bit ambiguous, and people can attach their meaning to it when they’ve heard the songs and made their own relationship with the EP. It also has a sort of second meaning where we see this band as a vehicle to accomplish every single one of our dreams.
The collection is glorious: a series of sparkling shimmering jewels that shine with a mesmerising light.
As sparkling as the title to the opening track ‘Sunny Morning’ is, there is a melancholy tremble to the vocals that sing of a deep yearning and romanticism:
Sunny morning
Rain was falling
I don’t want to wait
For you Now
Don’t let me down
This is blinding incandescent dream pop at its very best and reflects this magical band’s capacity to capture sunshine in every song.
The track is accompanied by a luscious seventies sun-bleached video, directed by Josh Fogarty and edited by Liam Jordan, that is infused with a sort of vintage sheen as the camera follows the band around in some bucolic Australian paradise.
Second track ‘My Everything’ is a pop delight and certainly for me one of the top releases last year – cresting on a wave of melancholy and yet bright and effervescent at the same time with its jangling guitars and sky-scraping melodies. The band says of the track:
‘My Everything’ was a song originally written about a dream vocalist Lilla had about a loved one being struck by lightning. The band spent a bunch of time finding more meaning in the track and have come out the other side with a symbolically rich indie-banger about being in love with someone whilst enduring a storm, and enjoying mundane things while the world is crashing down around you.
The lyrics capture the double edged nature of the song – romanticism and sweetness with an air of yearning:
Sweet you’re everything i wanted
So love me till im rotten
You’re everything i wanted
The video captures the radiance and sense of wistful innocence in the song and injects a glorious washed out colour pallette over the scenes of Lilla Obradovic singing, often with a broad infectious smile on her face, performing in a decayed urban landscape (capturing again the duality of the delivery). Often in front of a screen, there are layers of visual stimulation with a sense of joy and abandonment in the performance, all full of colour and movement, restless, hyperactive and yet bleary eyed.
The performance would gladden the heart of the most miserable person in the world with it effervescence and glow (I’m evidence of this). Directed by Josh Fogarty and edited by Liam Jordan, it is a perfect accompaniment to the delicious track:
‘Chamomile’ is the new tracks and a delicious quite and reflective ballad with Obradovic’s velvet vocals coasting over jangling, sparkling guitars, infused with a yearning melancholy and the sweet melodies that make this band so special.
‘Drug Store (Waste My Time)’ features the most wistful and yearning melodies carried on the shoulders of jangling fuzzy guitars, this is an epic pop track that glitters sparkles like the sun off a diamond.
Obradovic says of the track:
When I started writing this song, It was about always wanting more from a significant other, but it evolved into a sort of longing and desperation to be seen by someone you don’t even really know. Someone who might not even know you exist yet.
You know that feeling when you have a big crush on someone from a distance and you hope that they can feel your eyes on them across the room, but it’s all just juvenile because you don’t even know if you’d like them if you really got too close? I suppose the song is about that feeling. A dream of something that isn’t and might never be.
There is a cinematic breadth to this track: a hint of melancholy and a dollop of euphoria in its grand, scaling chorus.
‘Green Thumb’s continues their shimmering trajectory skywards with its melancholy-infused effervescent jangle and soaring choruses.
The band worked with producer Fletcher Matthews (Clews, Sweater Curse) with mastering by George Georgiagis (Debbies, The VANNS). Obradovic says of the track:
I started writing Green Thumb one afternoon when I looked around my apartment and realized I only had one houseplant that was still alive. So I suppose I started thinking ‘I hope I don’t neglect relationships like I do my plants!’ Jack is really good at bringing light summery and anthemic themes and fun catchy riffs into our music and so from there we just built on that before taking it first to the rehearsal studio with the band and then to Fletcher the Producer we worked on for this one.
The crystalline guitars etch gorgeous trails on the horizon while the quiet/loud attack is dramatic and euphoric as the lyrics outline an amusing observation of obsession and nurturing. The accompanying video bursts with a joyous and liberating performance with tongues firmly planted in cheeks and a bucolic, pastoral air:
When this was released as the first single, the song heralded a new direction for the band, as Obradovic recounts:
Usually Jack and I will come up with the initial lyrics and chords of a song separately or sometimes together, and then we will take the new song to band practice where we will flesh out new riffs, the structure and of course Seb and Dom will come up with their bass and drum parts. We have just recently started working with Fletcher Mathews who collaborated with us on Green Thumb rewriting some structure, lyrics and parts.
The result confirms Jet City Sports Club place as a mesmerising force.
‘Every Single Dream’ is quite simply a triumph: every single track is a gorgeous ray of incandescent sunshine, filtered by a thread of yearning and melancholia and a deep seated innocent romanticism.
‘Every Single Dream’ is out now and available to download and stream here. Hopefully there will be a vinyl release: this sort of sonic sparkle deserves it.
Jet City Sports Club will be launching the EP in the coming months – details below.
Feature Photograph: Ruby Boland
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