Jas Frank & The Intoits – The Girl From Cherry Valley
No one ever said that it’s easy to make a smart music video, especially when you consider just how immensely talented this emerging generation of millennial musicians are in every aspect of their medium, but in making a video that not only doesn’t blend into the crowd but actually serves as a template for what a band’s identity would be built around, Jas Frank & the Intoits seem to be more than adept.
The video for their debut single “All the Highs All the Lows,” from the album The Girl from Cherry Valley, uses romanticism, existential vision and surrealist themes to stylize an already imagistic song into a full-blown symphony capable of inducing sensory overdrive with only a single view. It’s a heck of a way of introducing themselves to a planet hungry for new music, and possibly the most memorable video of any rookie act debuting this year.
“All the Highs All the Lows” isn’t the only star to behold on The Girl from Cherry Valley; in fact, quite the contrary. When juxtaposed with “High in Space,” “In a Hole,” the title track and “Unlight the Light,” the single is actually one of the more simplistic songs on the whole of the album.
Tracks like “Virtual Friends” are littered with experimental harmonies that come to us battered by a melodic, albeit synthesized, rhythm that is influenced equally by folk, rock and pop music. There’s no shortage of startling hybridity here, but Jas Frank & the Intoits are careful to avoid the pitfalls that come with such bold explorations in the studio.
The Girl from Cherry Valley enjoys a beyond-surreal production quality, and while it’s definitely one of the more fluorescently-fashioned rock records out this quarter, I don’t think that the music itself is shapeless in the slightest.
“So Far Away,” “Human Animal” and “Virtual Friends” are as muscle-bound and rich with vitality as they come, but they’re driven by pretty focused hooks that make themselves a dominant force to be reckoned with in each respective chorus.
Even the contemplative “In a Hole” feels like a celebration of sonic strength that doesn’t hold anything back from us instrumentally or lyrically, and it imparts an unadulterated gusto in its textures that you just don’t find every day in this business.
If this is a fair representation of what we can expect out of Jas Frank & the Intoits moving forward, then I think that there’s no need to debate whether or not this band is going to continue to make headlines in Europe and abroad as we inch closer to 2020.
There’s a lot of really amazing music being made right now, and I don’t have a doubt in my mind that regardless of scenes, politics and industrial preconceptions about where popular trends are going to take us next, The Girl from Cherry Valley is among the cream of the crop that you can count on for rollicking rhythms and thoroughbred thrills this March. They’ve definitely made a fan out of me, and after hearing even one of these stellar songs, I’m sure they will you, too.
If you enjoyed a preview from The Girl From Cherry Valley, check out the official website for Jas Frank & The Intoits by clicking here. Give them a follow on Twitter by clicking here.
