“You bring me down. I don’t want to live here with you anymore.”
Detroit outfit Jamaican Queens is a weird act. The music is chilling, the lyrics are depressing, but still, you walk away from band’s debut, Wormfood (out on vinyl February 11th), feeling comforted. That’s mostly to do with their melodies–simply, cloying lullabies that somehow humanize the oddball echoes that resound through Jamaican Queens’ electric-inclined instrumentals–and vocal lines. Lead vocals by Abby Fiscus elevate the sound to a whole new level of soothing–and, simultaneously, devastating–with “Wellfleet Outro,” a gorgeously simple vocal duet with Jamaican Queens frontman Ryan Spencer.
Acoustic guitar and flickering piano coexist with a grave hip-hoppish beat, scratched distortion layers over gentle strumming, and Spencer’s gravelly melody lines serves both to contrast against and harmonize with Fiscus’ vulnerable, repeated chorus: “You bring me down, I don’t want to live here with you anymore.”
As it documents the catastrophic omnishambles of a doomed relationship, “Wellfleet Outro” seems to also be drawing attention to a greater sense of hopeless, unsurmountable isolation. Like two islands floating ever farther apart, Fiscus and Spencer draw away from the harmony of the first half of the song into a dual narrative of parallel vocal lines, occasionally falling over each other but never connected.
Listen to “Wellfleet Outro,” the gorgeous new single off Wormfood, below:
