Let it be said plainly: rock and roll does not need reinventing. It needs doing properly, with a straight face and a crooked grin, and that is precisely the trick Evil Jake pull off across *Be My Ex-Girlfriend*, a record that treats the three-minute pop song as a sacred and slightly ridiculous art form worth defending to the death.<\/p>
Produced by Adam Lasus, a man who has spent years coaxing warmth and grit out of guitars for the likes of Yo La Tengo, the album arrives sounding neither over-polished nor deliberately scuffed-up for authenticity points. It simply sounds like a band who know exactly which knobs to turn. Guitars crunch where they should crunch, choruses arrive with the confidence of a man who has rehearsed his exit line, and the rhythm section drives without ever showing off, which is its own kind of showing off.<\/p>
The title track sets the tone: a tongue-in-cheek send-up of romantic disaster dressed up as a singalong, the sort of song that gets shouted back at the stage by people who absolutely should know better than to want an ex-girlfriend back, let alone several of them. Evil Jake understand that heartbreak is funniest from a safe distance, and they mine that distance for all the hooks it’s worth. This is a band that writes bruises you can dance to.<\/p>
What separates them from the current crop of guitar bands treading water in nostalgia is craft. These songs are built, not assembled. The melodies soar without straining, the lyrics land jokes without sacrificing sting, and nothing here overstays its welcome. Comparisons to The Replacements and Fountains of Wayne feel accurate rather than lazy \u2014 both bands understood that wit and heartbreak are close cousins, and Evil Jake write from that same family tree, alongside echoes of Weezer’s crunch, Cheap Trick’s swagger, and the jangling melancholy of The Smithereens. There’s a case for the Police in Jacobs’ playing, too \u2014 economical, muscular, never wasting a note \u2014 bolted to a melodic instinct that owes as much to Costello as to Cheap Trick.<\/p>
Guest turns from Sam Endicott of The Bravery and singer-songwriter Patti Rothberg add texture without cluttering the picture; this remains, unmistakably, a guitar band’s record, unafraid of a big dumb riff or a chorus built for shouting along in a packed, sweaty room. Mastered by Joe Lambert, it has enough clarity to let every hook cut through without ever sanding off the edges that make it worth cranking. Even the sleeve, courtesy of art director Roman Tsukerman, gets the joke \u2014 a woman with a fistful of crossed-out names, tongue planted firmly in cheek before the needle even drops.<\/p>
And a packed room is clearly where these songs were born \u2014 years of club dates, shared bills with the likes of The Strokes, The Bravery, and The Charlie Daniels Band, USO tours, and stages both glamorous and grim have sanded the songwriting down to something durable. Nothing on here sounds like it was written to impress a playlist algorithm. It sounds like it was written to survive a Tuesday night gig in front of forty people and still get an encore \u2014 no backing tracks, no autopilot, just amplifiers doing the arguing.<\/span><\/p> There’s a stubbornness to bands like this \u2014 the refusal to chase whatever’s currently fashionable, the insistence that a great hook and an honest lyric never go out of style. It is a small rebellion, dressed up as classic American songwriting, and it is far more subversive than it lets on.<\/span><\/p> *Be My Ex-Girlfriend* will not change anyone’s life. It will, however, soundtrack several disastrous relationships, a fair few pub singalongs, and at least one very good summer. That is not a small achievement. That is the whole point of rock and roll, and Evil Jake seem to have remembered it while everyone else was busy trying to reinvent it.<\/span><\/p> **Verdict: Loud, funny, and built to last.**<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\nhttps:\/\/eviljake.com\/<\/a>\n\n\n\n\n
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