Portland’s Jaguar Love is the newish band of ex-Blood Brothers Johnny Whitney and Cody Votolato along with ex-Pretty Girls Make Graves multi-instrumentalist J Clark: On their Matador full-length debut Take Me To The Sea, Whitney sang (and added keyboards) and Votolato handled guitar and some bass; Clark did drums, bass, keyboards, and recorded it. That said, you’ll hear more Blood Brothers in the mix, largely due to Whitney’s signature idiosyncratic vocal approach/tone. Lead track “Highways of Gold” could very well remind you of the Brothers making like a kept-under-control Mars Volta giving a shot at a 3:15 pop song.
You can hear more at their MySpace.
Take Me To The Sea is out 8/19 via Matador. Fresh off Siren Fest, Jaguar Love are out on tour, often with the not-so revived Faint:
07/29 – Denver, CO @ Ogden Theater %
07/30 – Salt Lake City, UT @ In The Venue %
08/01 – Vancouver, CA @ Commodore Ballroom %
08/02 – Redmond, WA @ The Old Firehouse
08/03 – Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom %
08/05 – Burlington, VT @ U Of VT Davis Center Grand Ballroom %
08/06 – Long Beach, CA @ Que Sera #
08/07 – Los Angeles, CA @ Henry Fonda Theater %
08/08 – Anaheim, CA @ Chain Reaction #
08/09 – San Diego, CA @ Soma %
08/11 – Austin, TX @ La Zona Rosa
08/12 – Dallas, TX @ Palladium Ballroom %
08/14 – Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse %
08/15 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle %
08/16 – Washington D.C. @ 9:30 Club %
08/17 – Philadelphia, PA @ Trocadero Theater %
08/19 – Brooklyn, NY @ Southpaw
08/20 – Dallas, TX @ Palladium Loft
08/20 – Dallas, TX @ Palladium Ballroom %
08/21 – Toronto, CA @ The Opera House %
08/22 – Chicago, IL @ Vic Theater %
08/23 – Omaha, NE @ Sokol Auditorium %
% w/ the Faint
# w/ Crystal Antlers
[Photo by Michael Lavine]
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Great tune
The Blood Brothers have been a longtime fav of mine, but I haven’t been impressed with Jaguar Love. They sound like a watered down version of Crimes-era Blood Brothers. Also, Johnny Whitney’s voice isn’t easy to stomach without the loud and heavy guitars to back it.
On the other hand, Past Lives (made up of pretty much the rest of The Blood Brothers) sounds like they’re going to be the better of the two bands. They’re actually trying to sound a bit different, they’re heavier sounding and of course, they have the better vocalist from the bunch.
i hate correcting people, because it makes me feel like a know-it-all, but whatever: jaguar love is from seattle, brandon. oh well, if you can’t fact-check for hometown bands, who can you fact-check for?
and i agree with micheal; past lives > jaguar love. i sort of agree with why he doesn’t like jaguar love; to be honest, i’ve never really been that much of a fan of johnny whitney’s vocals to begin with. but past lives? holy hell, their rhythm section is fucking phenomenal. matador should pick them up, too.
Hey Douglas — i just checked w/ Matador and the band has, in fact, relocated to Portland. Remember, Portland is where basement shows and organic food were invented, so who could blame them?
You just drank his milkshake, Stosuy. +81 for you.
brando: thanks for the fact re-check. i actually (and obviously) had no idea. now, i’m sort of wondering how cool it would be to have matador on speed-dial. i’m pretty sure i’d fuck it all up by making them listen to my album. haha.
ha ha. i hated having to do the fact re-check, Douglas, because we usually agree on most things — but it was my duty to the city of Portland (and Jaguar Love).
it’s cool, brando. we’re totally comment-thread buddies at this point. i really do love portland, too, but perhaps i have a little residual “neighbor-to-the-north” jealousy issues. thanks for drinking my milkshake. +81 for you.
Hmm, I really didn’t see this one coming, but I think I really really like this album now. Whatever was on their MySpace a few months and that 3 song EP doesn’t do them justice. It’s still pretty post-hardcore at points contrary to me thinking this was going to be glam-y post-punk affair with too much Pretty Girls Make Graves infusion. To top that, it’s got hook. It’s not incredibly different from The Blood Brothers, but it’s just so solid that I can’t help but enjoy it. I’m still looking forward to Past Lives, though, just to see the direction they take things.
The 8/02 date is actually in Redmond, Washington.
You are correct. Fixed.
Everything I’ve heard from Past Lives sounds so boring and uninteresting.
Nah bro, I agree with the guys above. Past Lives have a pretty sweet rythym section. It’s kind of along the lines of Shellac and Fugazi. No wonder Blood Brothers split: Looks like Jaguar Love can’t get over the whole post-punk/disco-punk thing everyone was pulling a few years ago.
We can agree to disagree, but Jaguar Love seems to take all the good parts of the Blood Brothers (besides the dual vocals) and use them effectively. Past Lives just seems boring. We’ll see, though.
Yeah, we’re def going to have agree to disagree: I don’t think Jaguar Love takes the best parts of The Blood Brothers at all. I enjoyed the hardcore parts of The Blood Brothers sounds with heavy guitars, chord shifts and noise. I thought Johnny’s voice was only tolerable in these cases since it covered it up. I started to get sick of him a lot during Crimes and Young Machetes, which had more melodic and poppier tunes just like Jaguar Love has. Past Lives isn’t quite noisey in a loud sense, but it’s sounding more complex to me and I can bare the vocals. It has that hardcore element to it.
I think what it comes down to is some Blood Brothers fans enjoying very different parts of the band’s sound, and now we have a few conflicting opinions going on this board right now in regards to which is better. It’s 2008′s Mars Volta vs. Sparta.
I dont agree that past lives is better at all…. Johnny Whitneys Lyrics actually brings art to music. The reason they don’t get over that “post-punk/disco-punk” cause thats what they are good at doing and theyre sticking to it. The lyrics to the album Take Me To The Sea are just as creative/artistic as all the Blood Brothers albums
Yeah, lyrically they may have the edge, but I personally don’t care what the lyrics say when it comes to a band that has made a career out of being one of the better examples of modern art-punk/hardcore. Their lyrics never made much sense anyway.
Sounds like it’s just a matter of whether you like dude’s voice or not, which I don’t get since it’s not much different from Marc Bolan or Jack White or Cedric Bixler. I’ve heard some other songs from this record too, and there’s WAY more going on than his vocals. Yeah, parts sound like an “easier” version of the Bloodbrothers (not a bad thing), but there are lots of weird (and heavy) psychedelic and glam elements to the music that fit his voice and lyrics really well.
Alright, I’ll check it out. I’m not going to a dick about this. The Blood Brothers played an important part in broadening my perspective on music, so I owe them that much. It’s weird because I think I discovered them through AFI of all bands. I even got turned onto Morrissey and The Smiths through their lead singer dude (use that term loosely.) Now here I am years later loving bands like Fuck Buttons and HEALTH. Go figure. Thanks Davey Havok!
How about we all agree to agree that the best part of the Blood Brothers was that they combined the hardcore loud nastiness with the dancy glammy craziness in a way that was just simply fantastic, and it will take quite an effort from either of these new bands to match that excellent awesomosity.
I would love this band if the lead singer were a woman, but I found out he is not, so now I am not sure how I feel about them, eventhough “Bats” and “Videotape” sound like a great rocker Gossip.
Here’s the July Mix, if you want in on August, lemme know…
http://www.box.net/shared/kn3usbio8g
jonwolf@gmail.com