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| Prefixmag |
 Disco has spent decades as the black sheep of popular music, much maligned by guitar snobs everywhere, far past being acceptable, but recently it has become cool to rep Thelma Houston and Andrea True. Even the Yeah Yeah Yeahs openly admitted to having Giorgio Moroder in mind when they penned their new album. It's difficult to believe that this revival isn't partially owed to the fact that as technology and technique have improved over the years -- it's a lot easier to produce heavily synthesized tracks than it was two or three decades ago. Also, a healthier sense of self-awareness has allowed us appreciate the illusion and escape that disco allowed fans, and to respond with something that is generally much darker. Jeremy Jay's second full-length album, Slow Dance , can't be strictly classified as disco, but it shares the same calmly danceable, ethereal swaying feel as that genre's lighter fare, and the record's overall aesthetic harkens back a couple of decades as well. What Slow Dance doesn't do is make it clear whether or not Jay has learned the lessons that come with transforming the product of an era gone by....full text |
| Popmatters |
| It’s somehow apropos that Jeremy Jay has released his third record directly after the spring equinox. Slow Dance is a stylized musical take on winter, with the spacey emphasis sounding more like the memory of it than the actual season itself. There’s a chill here, but also the hint of flowers about to burst from the ground. Jeremy Jay is a man out of step. His world is the 1980s, all minimal new wave and instrumentation that sounds like it’s coming from the far end of a tunnel. Jay does this well. Slow Dance is a winning collection of songs, calling to mind Stephin Merritt minus about 20 recording tracks or Sparks in a reflective groove. He also possesses an innocence that is carried well. There aren’t a whole lot of performers who can successfully sing the line, “Giddy-up, horsey, giddy-up”, without coming across coy at best or a fool at worst. Well, coyness is certainly a factor but weariness accompanies it for a positive spin....full text |
| Tinymixtapes |
| Pop music tends to sound like summer. Even if the underlying feeling is wintry, most pop music attempts to transform this coldness into warmth – it turns the most devastating tragedy into a sunny celebration. Jeremy Jay’s Slow Dance, on the other hand, doesn’t try to conceal the fact that its pop-sensibilities exist in a world of never-ending winter. It’s a winter-night pop album that follows fragile, too-cool-to-care finger-snapping characters, who continuously move — sometimes on horseback and over moonbeams — but never permanently arrive anywhere on a winter night. The album is a road album that lacks a destination and celebrates this lacuna through the heroism of its restless characters. Jay’s Godardian sensibilities are no mystery for those who have kept up with the interviews, and this is clearly seen in the traces of movement that follow the characters as they push forward even after the closing notes of the last track. For, at the end of the album, Jay has cleverly re-articulated the problem from 2008’s A Place Where We Can Go. Slow Dance ends with a question – “Where could we go tonight?” And the only appropriate answer is: “Yeah.” “We Were There” paints a portrait of the hero who, like some courageous conquistador, goes looking for new lands, for new places to be and to dance. The hero has some sort of special historical consciousness in that he or she is always there at the right time, and this special vision returns on the closing track when we discover that the one who plays the “noble guitar” possesses the power to “see through time.” And this is ironic since we’re left at the end wondering where to go. Despite this Beckettian existential dilemma, there don’t seem to be any limitations on where the characters can go. “In This Lonely Town” finds the gang together, hitting the town, following the beat and the floating notes as they walk, turning the streets into a dance floor....full text |
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