Jejune - This Afternoons Malady

Ted Leo produced this one, engineered it, mixed it, and played additional guitar and tambourine on it, which tells you most of what you need to know about the company Jejune kept in 1998. Their second album runs fifty-five minutes across twelve songs, and every one of them is a band pushing hard against the edges of what a Boston emo record was supposed to sound like.

It is a considerable step out from Junk. The guitars are bigger and washier, the songs longer, and the shoegaze influence that had only been hinted at is completely in the room by "Solar" and "Fixed On The One." Joe Guevara and Arabella Harrison trade and stack vocals throughout, "Coping With Senility (Lowlife Owns A Pen)" runs six minutes without ever losing the thread, and "One Transmission" stretches past seven. A couple of four-track home recordings sit among the studio material and do not feel like filler, which is the highest compliment you can pay a record built this way. Alan Douches mastered it. Jason Gnewikow of the Promise Ring handled art direction.

It confused people on arrival. Reviews at the time were mixed, and a band that had shown up as emo suddenly sounded like Britpop and classic rock and shoegaze all at once. That omnivorousness is exactly why it aged so well. It has since been credited as a direct ancestor of the shoegaze revival bands of the 2010s, and one widely circulated ranking of the hundred best emo songs put the title track at number 99.

Numero Group reissue (NUM937), spread across two LPs for the extra headroom, remastered by Jeff Lipton at Peerless, lacquer cut at Nashville Record Productions, pressed at Independent Record Pressing. Jejune played their first shows in more than 25 years off the back of this campaign, so interest is live right now.