Weekly Album: Week of 12/17 - 12/23 - This Afternoon's Malady

This week I listened to This Afternoon's Malady by Jejune. This is an album that has been on my radar for a long, long time. Back when I first discovering lesser known Emo/Emo-ish bands and especially female fronted ones I had seen them listed along side bands like The Lazarus Plot or Eldritch Anisette. I believe at one pointed I had watched a recording of a live performance they did at someone's house but that was long ago enough that I can't remember anything about the music. So finally after all this time here I am listening to Jejune. This album surprised me in a lot of ways. For starters, the album very seamlessly integrates Pop into the Post-Hardcore/Emo sound in a way that doesn't sound like The Promise Ring or Pop Punk-y. I believe part of why it works so well is that they aren't afraid to let things be a little messy or noisy which you don't normally hear in Pop music. The music is very layered at times and one of the only ways I can describe it is that it sounds epic. Epic in the sense of grandiose and orchestrated. It was a lot of fun on the second listen of the album or going through it while writing this review to pick out parts that I didn't quite catch the first time. This might sound like an odd comparison, but it reminds me a little of Pet Sounds in that way as that is another album that is very layered instrumentally where you might not catch all the little details of every song the first time. Speaking of epic, another way this album surprised me is in the song length. With this style of music having roots in Punk, longer songs aren't extremely common, though not unheard of. This album is full of some long ones. Of the twelve tracks on here, nine of them are over 4 minutes long with six of those being over 5 minutes long. There is even a song that reaches the 7 minutes and 39 seconds mark, being the penultimate track "One Transmission". That song is a beautiful slower piece that showcases all the best quality of the album. The dualing female and male vocals, the beautifully layered guitar work, some pretty melodies, and some shockingly well utilized keyboard parts. I am not used to hearing keys very often in music like so it was a welcomed addition when I first heard them being used. I could go on and n about how much this album just fascinated me, so I will cut it short before this turns into an incomprehensible ramble. It is truly a fantastic and unique album amongst all the other 90s Indie/Emo/Post-Hardcore albums. 10/10