Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye
are the electronic experimental English
pop duo of Jockstrap, who, with I Love You,
Jennifer B, have released the only
album I am aware of for which the
listener gets to design their own album
cover. The absolutely blank bright green
record jacket contains the record, of
course, in translucent green, and then
two sheets of stickers: a variety of band
logos, the title of the album, titles of all
of the songs, and a chronological track list.
If one so desired, these stickers could
be placed in any order or in any combination
on the green jacket, or one could do what
I have done, and leave the cover in its
virgin condition and the sticker sheets
untouched. A pretty lo-fi art experiment,
it nevertheless tickles the fancy, and in
its way, is representational of their nutty
mix of unexpected elements. Georgia is
a violinist with a beautiful, jazz and
classically tinged singing voice, while
her partner is a kind of noisy mad scientist,
who is as likely to sample dogs barking
as he is to sample a snare drum or
hire a string ensemble. His wacky
noise making is always complimentary,
but never the thing you would expect
to hear under the beautiful singing, which
he will also weirdly augment at times,
running her vocal backwards, or splicing
it up and rearranging it in really odd
ways. It might be the weirdest beautiful
record I have ever heard. Digging around,
as one does, I discover today for the
first time that Georgia Ellery is one of
the three female songwriters in
Black Country New Road, a recent favorite
band of mine whose connection to
Jockstrap I had never suspected and
would maybe have never learned about
were it not for the stupid and beautiful
internet. I hear her voice and now
I recognize why I liked it so much.
Everything makes sense now.
Notes on the vinyl edition: I Love You Jennifer B, Rough Trade Records, 2023, translucent green vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 