Tag: Jess Chalker

Jess Chalker Captures the Way Modern Life Demands of us a Brisk Pace and an Upbeat Attitude Even When We’re Not Feeling it on Her Second Single “Secrets”

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Jess Chalker, photo courtesy the artist

With her second single “Secrets,” Jess Chalker channels a bit of mid-80s synth pop but through a modern production lens and with a self-awareness reminiscent of Lower Dens. The electronic drums are straight out of 1985 as are the spare, clipped, clean guitar work and the bouncy dynamic and the declarations of forever love. But Chalker mixes those elements with a song structure more in line with songwriting from the current era with a moment of clarity mid-song. What this format helps to highlight is the way perhaps an 80s song, sounding shiny and upbeat, concealed an emotional nuance, complexity and ambivalence. Like you’re feeling everything at once and having to juggle it all and try to process it all with integrity. Chalker sings about how everyone has secrets but some act innocent while concealing a “monster in the back yard.” The brisk pace of the song and its bright melody reflects how these days you’re expected to put on a positive face despite dealing with a lot of stimulation and expectations even when you feel like you can’t–that we all have to maintain a secret in modern life or seem like failures, a state that feeds into one’s dark side on the regular. Listen to “Secrets” on Soundcloud, connect with Chalker on Spotify and look out for her LP due out late 2020.

open.spotify.com/artist/3fBjKfBNe9rqMlg2juMryM

Jess Chalker’s Introspective But Urgent “Dance in the Rain” is a Synth Pop Critique of the Pervasiveness of Corporate Culture

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Jess Chalker, photo courtesy the artist

With her luminous new single “Dance in the Rain” Jess Chalker uses the sounds and rhythms one might expect from a 1980s pop song, maybe something by Bonnie Tyler or Kim Wilde, to sing about a subject so resonant then as it is now. The lush synths and vividly dramatic and dynamic vocals and slap bass accents place the songwriting style well as it suits the subject matter perfectly. In the 1980s the right wing in America and the UK had turned over decades of the opposite and an era of crass materialism and commercialism reigned supreme. Fast forward a few decades and we have a corrupt international system of commerce with even more dangerous right wing regimes in power in the UK and across the pond in the USA with the international oligarchy given economic and political privileges unseen since the early twentieth century. Chalker in putting a personal touch to the subject using it as a cultural backdrop and singing to a former love about the year they spent taking chances and living by ideals and not selling off their time to a corporation that isn’t compensating adequately and thus adding one’s, as Chalker deftly puts it, “shine” to the “corporate lights” and losing sight of one’s dreams and one’s inherent dignity and that of others. The song is introspective but has a thrilling emotional urgency and delicacy that is often underappreciated in 80s synth pop. Perhaps that’s some of the appeal of that music for the past decade to a decade and a half as a kind of resistance to the prevailing politics and its resultant culture was embedded into quite a bit of that music. Listen to “Dance in the Rain” on Soundcloud and follow Chalker at the link below. Look out soon for the monochrome, stop-motion animation video out soon.

open.spotify.com/artist/3fBjKfBNe9rqMlg2juMryM