Tag: jake minch

Jake Minch’s “whose you are” is Like a Diary Entry Brimming With the Raw Vulnerability of Feeling in a Moment of Peak Reflective Loneliness

Jake Minch, photo courtesy the artist

With mostly just an acoustic guitar and jhis voice, Jake Minch is able to pack a lot of emotional power and vulnerability to the songs from his October 20, 2023 EP how many EP. For the single “whose you are” we get a music video that looks like footage of someone documenting a time of great transition in a time of cold weather and journeys away from the places one knows best and the inevitable disruptions that occur and the necessary change of physical and social scenery and thus the nature of the emotional bonds one built with the people closest to you. The song is like a diary entry in its raw and poignant honesty and with some simple poetry it conveys impressions of connection, intimacy and the yearning for that when it’s something in the past and how confusing and painful it can be and how it can linger and still haunt a present that doesn’t seem so far to measure up and create new memories with the same depth of psychic resonance. Musically it’s reminiscent of artists like Wolf Colonel and perhaps Microphones but in a current manifestation of those creative impulses and mode of expressing those all too real feelings that strike you in a moment of peak loneliness and desolation. Watch the video for “whose you are” on YouTube and follow Jake Minch at the links below.

Jake Minch on Instagram

jake minch Taps Deeply Into the Bittersweet Nostalgia of the Unstructured Time of the Summers of Our Youth on “strip mall”

jake minch, photo courtesy the artist

During the late spring and summer of the early pandemic of 2020 it seemed like so much was up in the air and unless you were in a vital industry maybe you had plenty of time to indulge what it felt like to not have to be anywhere in particular at a particular time. Or if, like jake minch, you were in high school and it was a summer of talking with friends over video calls and bonding with friends in a way that involved a necessary physical distance but because you couldn’t necessarily make plans you could devote your time to these necessitated portals of communication and maybe that meant being more open and real and psychologically intimate than might have happened under normal circumstances resulting in a different kind of connection with your peers. For a brief period in our national history of recent years it seemed that most people recognized the fragility of their own existence and interdependence on other people they might have otherwise forgotten and that raw and vulnerable state of thing meant a bit more recognition of the value of other people in a way that wasn’t as obvious previously and an awareness that snapped back to business as usual soon enough. That extended liminal moment is what informs the emotional backdrop of minch’s song “strip mall.” With essentially just his delicate vocals and an acoustic guitar minch relates how memories of a t-shirt he saw an ex wear shopping at a strip mall when he returned home from college to visit and how that triggered an intense emotional resonance that brings him right back to the moments that helped define a significant moment in his life when he loved being younger and seeming to have all the time in the world to indulge in youthful exuberance and connections that seem like they’ll last forever in the context of one’s relative short life thus far but which wash past you quickly and maybe you hate that you’ll never be able to recapture that time in which you felt like you had so much freedom and endless possibilities even if there was a specter of a global pandemic in the case of minch and any other young person at that time. But many of us got to experience some of that energy again at a time in life when some adult concerns had of necessity to be put on hold for longer than we can consciously remember except in our youths. Maybe minch’s song is bittersweet and melancholy but it powerful conjures both those memories with the immediacy and accessibility of its emotional resonance in anchoring it to concrete imagery. Watch the video for “strip mall” on YouTube and follow jake minch on Instagram.