Right now feels like the age of melodic muscularity, and if you need evidence proving as much, you simply need to turn on the radio and flip to any station – beefy beats and larger-than-life melodies will meet you there. In this spirit, everything from country to hip-hop to pop is getting heavier and more sonically devastating, which is where a record like Jaye Madison’s MIRЯOR: Framework steps in; rather than simply taking a slick country sound and scooping it on the equalizer, this is an EP that lives and breathes heaviness with every melody it produces. While the hooks and harmonies will draw you in, MIRЯOR: Framework has a way of hypnotizing its audience with far more elaborate measures than most contemporary releases would employ.
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I immediately dug the compelling use of pressure most everywhere in this disc, and in slower tunes like “Devil I Know” or the deliberately stomping “Shadow Man,” it makes enough of a difference to draw an almost rock n’ roll-like punch out of the bassline that wouldn’t have been present in a different setting. Jaye Madison seems intent on giving us everything they’ve got in every department here, and although they press the limits of frills-free alt-country as far as they can without dipping their pen in retro ink, it’s clear that they weren’t trying to get too experimental with the framework of the music here. Compositionally speaking, MIRЯOR: Framework would play as well twenty years ago as it does now – though it would have been regarded as one of the heaviest non-rock pop EPs to drop in that period.
Consistently groove-centric, tracks like “Catch 22” and the cosmopolitan beat wonder “In the Grey” have some provocative lyrics that one might be inclined to ignore in favor of getting lost in the misty gaze of the beat – but I wouldn’t recommend it just the same. There’s a lot of really evocative poetry to behold in MIRЯOR: Framework, and although the instrumentation is cooking up just as much of a good time, I would tell new listeners to give the record a couple of independent sessions just to better appreciate the individual elements that make it such a fascinating spin time and time again.
If Jaye Madison can build on the countrified conceptualism they’ve started here in MIRЯOR: Framework with a proper studio album in the next year or so, I don’t see what would stop them from toppling a lot of the stiff competition they face out of the underground at the moment. This generation’s current alternative country scene has been regarded as one of the most interesting and active in all of the world, and while the non-music press will tell you that people are leaving the city in droves for the countryside of smaller markets where they can thrive on a more regional basis, bands like Jaye Madison are keeping the national beat alive with releases that deserve the attention of indie fans around the globe this month and throughout the rest of the season.
Chadwick Easton