Happy Jawbone Family Band – Tastes The Broom (Mexican Summer)
By Scott Creney
Now this right here is one charming piece of music. Happy Jawbone Family Band is having all kinds of beautiful fun. They use tape hiss the way Kevin Shields used to use his tremolo bar, as a way to keep things sounding fresh and unexpected, swooning and trippy.
It’s too demented and gleeful to be offensive. It’s barely of this planet and doesn’t have a mean bone in its body. Tastes The Broom sounds like it sprung fully-formed from the beautifully stoned mountains of Brattleboro, Vermont. It oozes honey and light, and is sweetly fucked in a way that makes you want to take it home and make it big fluffy pancakes.
The future lawyers of the University of Georgia love it unanimously. The vote was 1-0, with the rest of them abstaining because they’re all cowards. The lone affirmation came from a good tipper with bright eyes and a bashful smile — the ideal HJFB listener I’d imagine.
As for me I love all of this. The melodies tug and pull at my spleen. The singing and playing are so filled with life, like they wouldn’t dare be anywhere else. I’ve been listening for two weeks now, asking myself if this album is really as good as I think it is. Truth is, it might be better.
You want comparisons? Um… Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci covers Neutral Milk Hotel? Or maybe the other way around? ‘Fistful Of Butter’ reminds me of ‘In A Perfumed Garden’ by Television Personalities, but it might be even better, more fragrant and more stumbling, exhausted and enthralled like a wasted horizontal weekend.
It feels like more than a mere album, with suggestions of communal living — I imagine HJFB living on a farm just outside of town, with psilocybin growing on the other side of the hill, just before the covered bridge. Existing on a diet of potatoes and love, it’s the Happy Jawbone Family Band. They’ve made you something beautiful. Go on. Take it. The last song’s the sweetest and it isn’t even on here.
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