Once voted "the
most beautiful man in the world", Swedish singer/songwriter Jay-Jay
Johanson started composing
already as a teenager, but it wasn't until August 1996 he was to release his
first album, "Whiskey". Recorded at Break My Heart Studios, in
the Stockholm archipelago. The instant success of this debut album,
caractarized by its jazzy vocals over trippy, film noir
arrangements, took Jay-Jay out on his first of many world tours.
After
"Whiskey" with its unforgettable songs like "It Hurts Me
So" and "So Tell The Girls That I Am Back In Town", Johanson
released "Tattoo" in
1998. The first step in his music's evolution into a more richly textured, poetic
ambience, as we can hear in the haunting "Milan Madrid
Chicago Paris", "Even In The Darkest Hour" and "She's Mine
But I'm Not Hers". Released in April
2000, "Poison" went straight into the French chart at number four.
Darker more depressive themes were presented, and frustration was
sometimes heard in Jay-Jay's voice. The album featured contributions from The
Cocteau Twins founder and guitarist Robin Guthrie.
The same year Johanson
also composed the soundtrack to the film "La Confusion Des Genres", made
by French director Ilan Cohen, and in 2001, Jay-Jay
Johanson emerged with "Cosmodrome", a sound-and-image installation
first exhibited in Dijon. This art-piece hastravelled around the
world and was last shown at Musée d'Art Modern in Paris.
The delicate
electronic ingredients heard in "Cosmodrome" became a link into
Jay-Jay's next album "Antenna" released 2002, an ambitious side
project, recorded with assistance from german electronica experimentalists
Funkstörung. Year 2004 marked the release of a compilation,
"Prologue", meant for the American market, which made for an
excellent introduction to most of Johanson's material.
The next step in
Jay-Jay's career was the album "Rush" from 2005, an album partly
produced by the French House genius J-P Ensuque. The next2 months
proved to be a prolific period in terms of songwriting, and Jay-Jay Johanson
soon found himself with a new collection of material. And in
the spring of 2006 Jay-Jay Johanson decided to call together the former
musicians he had worked with on the th 1ree first albums.
January 2007 saw the
release of "The Long Term Physical Effects Are Not Yet Known". Maybe
even more seductive and startlingly eclectic than any of
his prior work. The album was generally acclaimed as his finest ever, and it spawned
great singles in the languorous ballad, "She
Doesn't Live Here Anymore" and the mesmerizing "Rocks In
Pockets". A "Long Term" tour started off in China and continued around the world, with Jay-Jay fronting his quartet.
Work on his new album
began after this tour and took just over four months to complete. Writing and
recording were carried out in bursts, between which he
simply got on with his new life as a father. The tapes started rolling in
Jay-Jay's home studio in Sundbyberg early spring 2007. The
poetic strength of Johanson's lyrics and vocals was matched on these recordings
by innovative arrangements together with an element of
continuity provided by drummer Magnus Frykberg and piano player Erik Jansson.
"Wonder
Wonders" is a searching and evocative song where spare rhythms,
avant-garde guitar playing and fleeting piano chords lay under Johanson's
smouldering tenor. "Lightning Strikes", another epic ballad from
Jay-Jay with austere orchestrations and romantic lyrics.
“My Mother's Grave”
revolves around Erik’s steady piano playing and Frykberg’s lightly swinging
monotone rhythm, but it broadens the textural landscape
with assorted elements of noise. Jay-Jay’s ability to bring together textures
that would seem to have nothing in common
make his songs so
consistently interesting. Even when he resorts to relative conventional
changes, as on the closing track “Sore” where the arrangements are
so imaginative, and the rhythmic displacements so intriguing, that they never
sound commonplace. With his seventh album
"Self-Portrait" Jay-Jay Johanson remains as surprising and daring as
ever, exchanging the ornate arrangements and etheral strings of
earlier releases for organic noise and twisted sensibilities.
Johanson’s melancholic
songwriting and orchestral vision are what ultimately makes this new album such
a compelling record, intriguing textures and sonic
combinations aside, it’s as good a collection of songs as Jay-Jay Johanson has
written to date, and even at it's most accessible it's filled
with structural surprises that make for listening that avoids the predictable.
"Self-Portrait",
recorded in the Break My Heart studio, with contributions from the American
improvisation guitarist Jeff Rian, is both alluring and urbane,
The albums's trip-hop textures belie its troubled lyrics, inspired by personal
concerns. All songs married subtly catchy melodies to intricate
atmospheres. Tension underlies the crisp rhythms and experimental playing,
while the distinctive vocals draw out the sentiment in his
songwriting. As he prepares to bring this new work to a new world tour, Jay-Jay
Johanson continues to confront the
personal challenges
that have enriched his work for more than a decade. And he continues to follow
this path – with patience, perseverance, and
beauty.
