The Static Jacks
We here at Static Jacks believe every new album should feel like a fresh start; A time for painting the walls a different color, or maybe just knocking holes in them… Maybe seeing if there’s anything cool stashed away in there, like stacks of money or whatever. “It’s all about the benjamins” – Puff Daddy (1997). With that in mind, we would like to introduce to you our sophomore long player, In Blue.
In the midst of extensive touring in support of our first album (If You’re Young, 2011) and followup EP (Spray Tan, 2012), we began to feel a transformation taking place. Without necessarily doing it consciously, we seemed to stop putting on quite so many Buzzcocks and Replacements songs in the van, and started putting on the likes of Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, and Christian Death. Unfortunately they sounded like shit because the van speakers are garbage (we also started listening to more Garbage), and at 65 mph the very frame of the vehicle produces a constant tone that the tuning apps on our phones approximate to be a high C#.
Upon returning from tour and beginning to write more material, the harshly fuzzed and often-creepy soundscapes created by these bands, further distorted by our sub-standard listening environment, began to creep into our consciousness. One of the early products of this was lead-off single “Wallflowers”. The energy of the first album and the tones of the second are wedded perfectly, forever and ever, never to be divorced, unlike the parents of ~ 50% of people reading this. And the man responsible for officiating that wedding is none other than Andrew Maury.
Having collaborated on various projects over the years, we decided Andrew Maury was, without a doubt, the man for the job. He just seemed to “get it”. We’d be all, “but do you, like, get it?”, and he’d be all “yeah you guys, I get it.” So as you can see, it was a no-brainer. His years of experience as both a producer and touring front of house mixer (Ra Ra Riot, Givers, RAC, Princeton, Mathieu Santos, Chairlift, Surfer Blood) have developed the skills and imagination required to bring our musical dreams to life, and manipulate them like so many little puppets.
And so we dug in. Making the short daily commute to Retromedia Studios in Red Bank NJ, we explored new territory with the wide-eyed wonder and curiosity of children. Tracking songs, deleting them and starting over, lifting from homemade demos, experimenting with the plethora of strange instruments at our disposal (pi-a-no?), were all crucial stepping stones along the path to completion.
In the end, we decided that we just want to watch the audience slowly headbang and lose their hearing. We believe In Blue offers us just that opportunity. It’s a record about not reaching one’s potential. It’s a record about doubting whether there even was any potential in the first place. It’s a record about buying
another fuzz pedal and starting over.
-Static Jacks