Jaye Jayle "After Alter" CD

Louisville, Kentucky-based musician and artist Evan Patterson never planned for JAYE JAYLE to blossom from a stripped-down solo project into the otherworldly, full-band sonic experience that it is today. In the beginning, the songs were short and lighthearted, written on acoustic guitar with no intention of releasing them or even performing them publicly. Time, however, is a fickle thing.

‘After Alter’ is an astounding collection of musical memories and emotional fragments, all drawn together from previous recording sessions and previous lives in order to chart a cathartic creative course into new, unknown territories. At once volatile, gut wrenching and serene; expect the unexpected.

Patterson first formed Jaye Jayle as a new, unbridled take on his musical output; as a means of making unheard sounds and music that resists being forced into any exact mould or genre. It is perhaps rather fitting then that within a year his acoustic solo project had blossomed into a full band and a full-length album: 2016’s haunting post-punk, kraut-blues debut House Cricks and Other Excuses to Get Out.

Back to back North American tours that same year alongside alt-country originators Freakwater and avant-garde metal band Sumac began Jaye Jayle’s journey of sharing stages and creative spaces with artists from a plethora of musical genres and backgrounds, as the group also became the full-time backing band for American singer-songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle on their first European venture. A product of the disparate yet defiant position that Jaye Jayle were carving out for themselves, the outfit’s second album, 2018’s ‘No Trails and Other Unholy Paths’ saw them dive deeper into a minimalist, art-rock abyss with David Lynch’s longtime sound engineer Dean Hurley at the helm.

Subsequent years saw Patterson perform over 400 shows across North America and Europe with Jaye Jayle, playing and recording guitar for Emma Ruth Rundle and fronting his longtime noise-rock group Young Widows. The liminal lifestyle and constant travelling inspired Patterson to compose what would become Jaye Jayle’s 2020 album, ‘Prisyn’, produced by Ben Chisolm (Chelsea Wolfe); an atmospheric and entirely electronic offering, true to the band’s genre-defiant form.

The band’s most recent full-length, 2023’s ‘Don’t Let Your Love Life Get You Down’ is a devastating yet heartburstingly hopeful response to Patterson’s unexpected divorce from now ex-wife and ex-collaborator Emma Ruth Rundle. Not so much a statement about the split but rather a desired outlook for an unknown future, against all odds ‘Don’t Let Your Love Life Get You Down’ finds light in the dark.

Jaye Jayle’s forthcoming fifth collection album, ‘After Alter’ is all of this and more. Raw remnants and lingering refrains from these pivotal moments are reframed to form a powerful reminder of what Jaye Jayle is and always has been: an unadulterated, unfiltered outlet for the sounds that pour out of Patterson’s mind at any given time or place. ‘After Alter’ is a document of the indecipherable, of feeting feelings dragged once again to the surface. Lead single and opening track ‘Father Fiction’, for example, dives headlong into the fables and factious ideologies of organised religion with a hardened gaze and a wry smile as rolling drums and repetitive discordant guitar refrains spiral ever down into the labyrinth of meaning and misinterpretation.

Elsewhere, ‘Fear Is Here’ sees Jaye Jayle facing up to day-to-day examples of how terrifying everything around us can become within an instant as the song’s truncated blues piano hook is pushed ever further, distorted over time into something strange and hideous whilst the crawling post-hardcore dirge of ‘A Blackout’ serves as a searing critique of the American Dream; a nameless, homeless protagonist worships the alluring glow of billboard ads from their bed in the dirt on the side of the highway.

Simultaneously both tracks five and eight though, the arresting ‘Bloody Me’ is Jaye Jayle’s dichotic, janiform identity made manifest. Written even before the band’s debut album was released, track five’s ‘Bloody Me’ is a bolshy, bass-driven punk rock retaliation to dressing up for Halloween because Patterson is always dressed for Halloween. Track eight’s ‘Bloody Me’ however, is a tender solo acoustic recording cut straight to wax at Third Man Records in Nashville, mere hours before Patterson saw Bob Dylan perform for the first time. Two sides of the same coin; one ferocious and snarling, the other plaintive and bare but both unapologetically Jaye Jayle.

Closing with the formative acoustic recording that undoubtedly helped shape Patterson into the artist he is today, ‘After Alter’ also serves as a new beginning. By creatively exorcising these poignant moments, Jaye Jayle have opened themselves to even more inspiration and there is already much more to come. Co-released by Berlin’s Pelagic Records and Patterson’s new imprint Future Heart Works, ‘After Alter’ will follow a book of Patterson’s illustrations, ‘Songs Without Words Or Sound’, as well as a fully live, and equally mercurial, Jaye Jayle album.

FOR FANS OF
Leonard Cohen fronting Spiritualized, Spacemen 3, JJ Cale, Lungfish, Angels of Light, Young Widows