Video Premiere: Jupiter Styles—’Baby Steps’
Posted: by The Editor
Jupiter Styles’ debut album Be Good, which we premiered back in July, injects warmth and equanimity into the sort of rock that often pulls the other way. Emo, aesthetically DIY pop-punk, and crunchy, overblown power-pop are genres that typically accost their innate pop sweetness with brasher instrumentals, muddier production, and more aggressively emotional subject matter. The songs on Be Good challenge their melodic foundations in the way of their many forbearers (Teenage Fanclub, Weezer) and contemporaries (Joyce Manor, Oso Oso). But frontman/songwriter Sean Neumann, who also plays bass in the country-tinged indie band Ratboys, never sounds like a flailing adolescent on Be Good.
His songs have a steadiness that allows them to retain their thoughtful character throughout the record’s bumpy ride on myriad youthful rock roadways. It’s difficult to parse their exact defining feature, but simply put: Jupiter Styles’ songs are exciting and calming at the same time. The album’s closing track, however, is its purely soothing outlier. “Baby Steps” is a swaying folk tune with a breezy pedal steel feature that, on paper, is a stark contrast to the punchy bops that precede it. But as a brief, earnest recount of Neumann’s coming-of-age epiphany that life can be approached with measure and care, it actually serves as a proper seal to an album that’s presented with such discretion.
The video for “Baby Steps” is a montage of blissful, homemade childhood footage, sunny nature shots, and Neumann patiently strumming beside some train tracks. It’s poignantly nostalgic and you can watch it right here:
Be Good is out now via Other World Recordings.
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Eli Enis | @eli_enis
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