Jane Leo

One Liner: Forgettable bedroom pop made by two local artists joining forces

Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia - bedroom pop

Home: Austin

Poster Position: Level 5 (24) 
Weekend One Only.
Sunday.

Thoughts:  Huh.  Half of this band was the front-man for a band that I really liked off of one of the old ACL lineups (review here), who I then got to see again at Sound on Sound Fest right before a torrential downpour washed that entire Festival away forever.  Leopold & His Fiction is a solid rock band fronted by Daniel Leopold.  He apparently met Jane Ellen Bryant - also an ex-ACL lineup artist (review here) at a Black Fret event and were encouraged to work together.  According to an article I read about them, they also ended up in an actual relationship.

The bummer, at least for me, is that this is super-not the Leopold sound.  This is synthesizers and drum machines, like a couple making bedroom pop as a throwaway, which leads to pretty forgettable tunes.  One album - 2023's Jane Leo - and the top track from that was their first single from 2021.  "Tell Me (I'm on your Mind)," with 168k streams.

That song is fine, it just doesn't stick.  Until the horns come in, it literally sounds like two people just noodling around on a song idea in there home studio during the pandemic.  That is the first song on the album, and the second song on the album gets the second-most streams.  You can actually watch people lose interest with this band on the stream count - 168k, 131k, 77k, 65k, 25k, 23k, 10k, 9k.  That second tune is called "The More You Know."

I don't want to be rude about them - I liked them both individually back in their prior iterations, but this little Casio 2000 ass backing track just doesn't get me anywhere.  The video is like a low rent Wes Anderson thing though.  I kind of like it.  I wouldn't go out of my way to hear this one.