“Don’t let your love life get you down / We’ve all got bad apples on the ground,” sings Evan Patterson on Black Diamonds and Bad Apples – the third track from Jaye Jayle’s latest release, Don’t Let Your Love Life Get You Down.
Patterson has always harboured a fascination with the margins. While inspired by his native Louisville’s post-hardcore history, with his band Young Widows, the band skirted on the fringes of it. And since, through various projects, Patterson has maintained the illusion, blurring the lines with an artistic spirit you can never quite put your finger on.
Jaye Jayle’s first two releases, House Cricks and Other Excuses to Get Out (2016) and the acclaimed No Trail and Other Unholy Paths (2018), both bordered on unclassifiable, as the essence of psychedelia was overshadowed with a wicked brand of gospel blues. Prisyn followed in 2020 and was another left field release, loosely inspired by electronica and sound design, continuing Patterson’s journey down the path to destination unknown.
Since Prisyn, Jaye Jayle has gone under the radar, and it’s when artists often produce their best work. It certainly rings true in Patterson’s case, as Don’t Let Your Love Life Get You Down is not just Jaye Jayle’s most immediate sounding record. It’s their best. A concoction of gospel-infused roadhouse blues.
Patterson’s nicotine-addled baritone is tailor-made for rundown ale houses where sorrow is served by the gallon. With many of these songs inspired by his divorce from fellow songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle, the result is a record where Patterson hasn’t sounded so explicit.
Alongside producer/mixer Ben Chisholm (Chelsea Wolfe) and longtime Jaye Jaylers, Louisville veteran Todd Cook (bass), Chris Maggio and Neal Argabright (drums) and Corey Smith (synths), Patterson kicks things off with Warm Blood and Honey. With soul boy harmonies, rattling percussion and a thumping bass line, the track leaks with an eerie southern gothic charm.
Jaye Jayle - Don't Let Your Love Life Get You DownMeanwhile, The Party of Redemption is one of the best tracks Patterson has written. With rolling washes of drone, it’s a dirge-riddled troupe caked in absolute misery. (“We celebrate what’s falling apart / I’ll introduce you to the trash man/ They’re filling the lands with broken hearts”).
The brooding tones of That Snake Bite are about as elusive as Patterson’s lethal use of metaphor that masquerades the pain. Then there’s Tell Me Live – one of the few electro-folk tracks that’s done right simply because it comes from a place of everyday reality instead of the cheap sugar rush of hedonism.
It creates the electric shocks that can be felt all the way through Stop Waiting for that Life, which echoes with the same sound design-inspired passages that feel distinct, simply because Patterson is coming at things from a completely different angle.
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Patterson has always maintained a feverish obsessions with the written word, and with the fractured doom balladry of The Florist, it creates the kind of dizzy atmosphere you’d associate with a Raymond Chandler novel.
It leads into the closing track, When We Are Dogs. It’s exactly the kind of song title you’d expect Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy to coin, so it’s no surprise that the fellow Louisville native features. With Patrick Shiroishi’s saxophones akin to being guided through a haunted house, it’s a fitting end to an album that’s all about picking up the pieces of a former life in a bid to move forward with a new one. That rocky road to redemption.
In the lead up to release of Don’t Let Your Love Life Get You Down, Patterson spoke of finding peace in accepting change. And while this may be the case in his life, this new approach has trickled down to his songs. Once an artist revelling in the ambiguity and intersecting different styles in a bid to stand alone, Don’t Let Your Love Life Get You Down sees Patterson laying it all on the line and bearing his soul like never before. And the results are imbued with a new sense of optimism.
Don’t Let Your Love Life Get You Down is out now via Pelagic Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.
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