The “Jazzfest” is a joke, a clever one. The title track and opener makes fun of all those befuddled schnapsers who seriously expect jazz music here: “They play at the jazz festival, but they’re already a rock band at the end of the day” − “But I don’t understand that, how is that supposed to work”, babble Singer and guitarist Paul Buschnegg and keyboarder Kilian Hanappi in a four-minute dialogue over a much too loud clicking beat, until everything dissolves into a bizarre rattling and banging. “Trippy” is what the two comment on in the song, but overall it’s mostly very meta.
At the same time, the JAZZFEST is not a joke at all, but an announcement. Although the former trio Pauls Jets (Busschnegg, Romy Jakovcic and Xavier Plus; Hanappi only joined last year) has been regarded as a beacon of hope for German-language indie pop since 2018, it has so far mostly been overshadowed by other Viennese bands. Now, with the third album and the first on the Berlin label Staatsakt, that should be over.
Between hangovers, therapy, tired discourses and capitalist availability constraints
But let’s move on to the sound first: Anyone who, despite the stirring opening, is still sitting in their armchairs with the lights dimmed, counting syncopations and blue notes, will soon be hit by the Jets with “Büro”, a lo-fi-punky appeal for refusal to work . After all: a jazzy part of the album is expressed in improv elements, thanks to the use of a saxophone (Ferdinand Ehs), in long psych rock expeditions, or in lyrics with the emotionless impulsiveness of cloud rap. In between, a mix of post-punk and Schlager, with the catchiness of Britpop and the pomp of art, but without the associated cerebrality.
It all sounds overwhelming at first, but in fact JAZZFEST is not only the longest but also the most stringent album by the Jets, this band that manages like no other to stay the course in all its ambiguity musically and in terms of content. Typical, for example, is the subtle world anger in the chanson-esque “Magdeburg”: “Sure, our clothes are more expensive now / And conversations mostly only revolve around films / That everyone just breaks up with great love / You often think of her with dry tongue .”
So the vague is a means to an end here, it doesn’t blur anything, but rather reveals something
Buschnegg’s and Jakovcic’s protagonists grow up between hangovers, therapy, tired discourses and capitalist availability constraints. Only: You might not be proud of it. All of this is incredibly vague, of course, but it is precisely this vagueness that is needed to reveal contemporary truths. Why commit yourself in a world of contingencies? “Really in love”, as another song already promises in the title, is something many of us are never at the moment.
So the vague is a means to an end here, it doesn’t blur anything, but rather reveals something. In contrast to Yes, Panic, you have to look closely for the political side of the Jets. Bilderbuch’s stylistic snobbery alone or Wanda’s Gassenhauer hedonism alone won’t get you very far here either − and Paul Buschnegg may have the same hairstyle as Schorsch Kamerun, but it’s quite a different band. One that makes masterful and very idiosyncratic projection screen pop.
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