The music of Tony Jay continues to captivate me. While the recent collaboration between the band's Michael Ramos and R.E. Seraphin as The Pennies suggested a few new directions, Ramos is back doing what he does best on this new TJ release. Faithless is out on Friday and it's like hearing a dream.
The woozy opener "Lose a Day" is a familiar vibe for anyone who's grooved to earlier Tony Jay releases, while the magnificent "Pray for Light" unfolds with precision and grace. The cut opens up from a plucked intro, dream folk morphing into a kind of This Mortal Coil-meets-Iron & Wine-kinda thing. "Masato's Notebook" wraps its hook around a twisting slide-guitar figure, the vocals breathy and sleepily aware. Where Faithless gets especially interesting is on "Familiar Dreams", a Gabys cover, and the title cut, numbers which see Tony Jay joined by Kati Mashikian (Mister Baby, April Magazine). Her voice turns this material into something that might have found a home on 4AD in an earlier era, but which marks the work of bands like Tony Jay as the true heirs to that iconoclastic legacy.
There's a consistency to the work of Tony Jay which suggests that the outfit has really sort of nearly trademarked a vibe. Faithless adds subtle variations to that vibe, but the music is as hypnotic as every Tony Jay offering, and still sounds to me like the music I heard in a dream which I'm grasping for as I wake. It's beautiful stuff, and from an already prolific set of musicians, I still want more.
Faithless by Tony Jay is out on Friday, June 13. Details below.
[Photo: Diem Vo]