The Brooklyn indie-pop duo’s second LP plays like the cloud-covered foil to an endless California summer.
Like Sarah, Factory, or Sacred Bones, Oakland’s Slumberland is the sort of boutique record label that assumes its own persona. Each entry, usually no longer than half an hour, is sewn into its patchwork gestalt, producing its own variant on the Slumberland formula: cute, fuzzy, and young at heart. As the label enters its 33rd year, founder Mike Schulman has ushered in a recent surge of activity, tapping the Bay Area’s wellspring of indie-pop talent to press a steady stream of revived acts, pseudo-supergroups, and scene veterans. New York City duo Jeanines are the odd band out among this latest batch of releases. Their second album, Don’t Wait for a Sign, is Slumberland’s lone East Coast offering of 2022 thus far, and they’re relative newcomers to the imprint’s inner circle. Bassist, guitarist, and drummer Jed Smith has performed in a few bands like My Teenage Stride over the past two decades, but Jeanines is the first serious project for singer and guitarist Alicia Hyman.
Speaking to Chickfactor, Hyman offered a brief summary of the band’s two-step creative process: She writes “sad folk songs” in her apartment, and sends them over to Smith, who “turns them into indie pop gems.” Since their self-titled 2019 debut, each party has refined their respective craft. Hyman’s chord progressions have grown more complex, providing a sturdier framework to drive her ruminative vocals into higher registers, while Smith has mostly shelved the trebly twee-punk timbres in favor of flower-power pastiche. On a macro level, the band’s vision is realized and tasteful, but its individual elements blur where they once blended. Like an impressionist painting, it’s most impressive as an aesthetic statement—pay too close attention and the album fractures into a collection of textured brushstrokes, some brilliant, some less so.
Both devout students of 1960s pop, Hyman and Smith are acutely aware of the effect echo can have on a song’s emotional resonance. The new record is shrouded in damp clouds of reverb, with faint impressions of its jangling guitars sneaking through like the sun behind an overcast sky. The same muggy treatment that elevated the Mamas & the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” from catchy folk-rock strummer to bittersweet anthem is slathered across the album like sunblock.
Don’t Wait for a Sign gels when the instrumentals take a step back, putting emphasis on the rubbery qualities of Hyman’s voice. Though delivered with a detached sigh, the chorus of “Any Day Now” bounces off of its minor chord progression like a rubber ball, stretching and warping in midair before concluding with a droll “la la la la la” cribbed from the Magnetic Fields’ playbook. Each verse on “Who’s in the Dark” sounds like its own hook, extracting pure pop syrup from a gloomy British folk palette. It’s not as punky and peppy as many of the band’s labelmates, but it works as the cloud-covered East Coast foil to Slumberland’s endless California summer.
Jeanines falter when they attempt to fit in with their peers. Fueled by clean, shimmery rhythm guitar, the record’s title track is an invitation to “wash away those worry lines, you still have a lot of time”—an encouraging sentiment, but one that sounds more Archies than Another Sunny Day. The song turns out undercooked compared to its neighbors, bound to a simpler instrumental that stifles Hyman’s usual melodic zeal. “Gotta Go” suffers an oversaturation of charm, repeating its title over staccato chords and metronomic snares. It’s the peak of Smith’s retromania, generously layering Hyman’s vocals atop an instrumental that wouldn’t feel out of place in the intro to a vintage cartoon variety show. Though under a minute long, it feels like dead weight on an otherwise succinct album.
Like many of the Sarah Records bands and ’60s bubblegum pop artists they look to for guidance, Jeanines are distinguished by towering peaks surrounded by pleasant but interchangeable filler. When confined to a 7" record like 2020’s Things Change EP, they thrive, urgently cramming as many hooks, harmonies, and symphonic flourishes as they can fit. There’s nothing on Don’t Wait for a Sign that quite holds up to immaculate slivers of pop like “Everyone Should Be Warned” or “Been in the Dark,” which benefit from baroque touches like Smith’s Mellotron or a Hyman violin solo. The solid foundation of moody songcraft on their two LPs is ripe for development. Shaking their minimalist DIY ethos in favor of more lavish impulses may be just what Jeanines need to truly transcend their influences.
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