STACK #179 Sept 2019

MUSIC FEATURE

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insecurities, relationship anxieties) way out into socio-political beliefs and how to rally fellow believers. “I think [imagination] is what facilitates curiosity,” she says. “Playfulness is conducive to the open mind, or being creative. It’s kind of how I’ve got through my whole life, too. Growing up I went through some f-cking tough stuff, and continue to, and if I didn’t have a sense of humour [or] my creative outlet to deal with it, I think I would be pretty f-cked. But I’m not! That’s an important thing to me.” She describes her favourite parts of the record as “just the consequence of mucking around in a studio and feeling free, trying things,” with venerated musician and producer Dave Sitek (TV on the Radio, Foals, Weezer, Yeah Yeah Yeahs). “He’s just an amazing human being,” Cerro attests. It probably wasn’t a randomly-flung idea of Sitek’s or Cerro’s to open the album with the marching snare drum, noble horns, and cymbal crashes of CHANGE ; likewise, the album’s other all-caps track is its closer, READY , which connects and closes the arc. “ CHANGE has the same energy of READY , but it’s a bit more manic – ‘I want to cry’, that kind of energy, where I’m trying to be an open- hearted, tolerant person, but I’m being met with these intransigent idiots who don’t want to do what is best for other people,” Cerro

INTERVIEW

at school,” she says, “but it is also a clown thing, too. Just because you’re intelligent doesn’t mean you have to be self-righteous or a dickhead about it. It doesn’t mean you can’t also be goofy and silly and not take yourself seriously – that’s important to me.” Curiosity and imagination are threaded throughout Complex , as is the passionate eloquence of a musician whose messages span her insular, macro environment (personal MONTAIGNE T he starch-stiffened Elizabethan ruff Jess Cerro wears on the cover of her new album Complex was a garment popular with the European noble and academic classes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For Cerro, it’s a nod to her moniker and French SCHOLAR AND JESTER ENTWINED philosopher namesake Montaigne, but it also signifies an equal and not-so-opposite approach to life. “I am an academic person, I’m a bookish person, and I was really studious

explains. “I think that is a really appropriate beginning to the album because it is a lot of struggle – not just interpersonal, but in tra personal. And I think READY is then going out and being like, ‘Actually, now I believe in myself, and now I’ve just got to fight.’” ZKR

Complex by Montaigne is out now via Sony.

(SANDY) ALEX G T he new album from (Sandy) Alex G is as densely knitted as the wood through which Hansel and Gretel hiked to find the sparkling house of sugar, but it’s also as detailed as the tiny veins in each leaf of that thicket. There’s less of the Elliot Smith-style acoustic guitars and more beautifully dislocated textures as G’s deft hand weaves melodies and repeated vocal themes; these elements are Very Hungry Caterpillars munching through and around his layered foliage (see lead single Gretel ). When we get to the cannibal witch at the centre of the album ( Sugar ), she’s of Bowser proportions with a voice like a tumour grated through bass synth, with flickering strings illuminating her barnacled face. Project 2 is electronic angels descending – occasionally obscured by cloud matter and a little bit unsure of their wings in the cross- drafts – to deliver their message. Affecting and bold, House Of Sugar is another deeply shimmering achievement from the Philadelphian musician. ZKR House Of Sugar by (Sandy) Alex G is out Sep 13 via Domino.

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SEPTEMBER 2019

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