Album Review: Yours Truly, The Commuter - Jason Lytle

A few years ago, the nuclear bomb was invented. Some beat poets in New York and the California coast were disturbed by this and wrote about it - the drunken warmth of a world ending blast, the despair and masochism America showed by building such horror.

I'm not sure if it's Global Warming, George Bush, Swine Flu or something else nightmarish, but the lyricism in the apocalypse has returned. The sweetness-of-being- in-the-ground is present in so many great folk-rock musicians right now (the ones who give a damn about writing). So, Jason Lytle's new beautiful and melodically surreal solo CD, Yours Truly, The Commuter, came out today.

It's a wonderful sequel to Sophtware Slump, and has all the suicidal sweetness. The sounds of a snow crash. It opens with simple, symphonic beats, something like - the soul leaving the body upon death and floating into outer space...

"Last thing I heard I was left for dead / Well I could give two shits about what they said"

The sentiment is: I don't care, I'm dead and it's beautiful. Hell yeah. One of the more mainstream tracks, "Brand New Sun" is about the nuclear end of all the things and the resigned beauty in watching the radioactive "new sun."

Like "Underneath the Weeping Willow" from Sophtware Slump, or Radiohead's "Let Down," there is no dread. Just acceptance. Also, like those songs, Lytle has a wonderful ear for electronic melody. Yours Truly pushes on painfully, almost drearily, with heavy, coarse guitar in "It's the Weekend," -

"Today is the day / It's the Weekend / It's here Saturday / It's the Weekend"

It's feigned happiness, but that's fine. I like when Jason Lytle is sad - because it's gorgeous. The album is out now on iTunes, and I'm sure everywhere where good record stores curate their stuff.

Jason Lytle - Brand New Sun

Grandaddy - Underneath the Weeping Willow

Radiohead - Let Down