Fabulous Soundtracks, the fourth studio album by reclusive Los Angeles musician Jack Name, is an homage to the IRL world and its twisted and varied romance with the worlds of our minds, in a wild collection of "soundtracks'', each a sonic re-construction dedicated to a distinct scene. Both musically and lyrically, this is Name's most adventurous and genre-defying album. Elements of acid, dance, folk, micro-tonal weirdness, horror, sensuality, impressionism, and bursts of rock fuse with Name's most direct yet ethereal lyric writing to date.
Each song with artful intention confuses dream-like experiences and common everyday situations, and vice-versa, sometimes inflicting a frightening energy into the banal, or this in reverse. Offering a "fabulous soundtrack" as the title implies, to dreamlike cinematic scenography including but not limited to; walking alone through a park at night, a woman tiptoeing through a garden, a person wrestling with time and change, lust, grieving a pet, driving alone in the rain, laying in bed with a lover, a bare tree standing in a field, looking through pieces of glass, and inviting the devil into the home (as one does). Recorded in Los Angeles by Name himself (with the exception of the drums by Dylan Hadley, and an insane acid bass performance on Track 1 by Will Canzoneri) and mixed in his birth city of Copenhagen with the help of Danish producer Nis Bysted, Fabulous Soundtracks climbs a whole new mountain in sound and production for Name, and one that's clearer and more refined than his earlier studio recordings. And while it significantly departs from Name’s earlier albums, it is nonetheless a triumphant culmination of his previous discography. What results is a more complete picture of this elusive artist, building steadily since his first release.
All of Jack Name’s albums can be classified as concept albums; Light Show is a rock opera about sedated kids, Weird Moons described Name’s experience of cancer and radiation therapy as a tale of werewolves in space, and Magic Touch was a portrait of a mistreated person failing at love. Fabulous Soundtracks can be seen less as a concept album and more like a string of beads, each track its own microcosm attempting to capture a discrete experience or if not, the lingering moods and memories left behind by that experience. According to Name, “There’s a funny balance between total detachment from reality and the deepest focus on the present moment. Each song comes from that place. It’s like an exercise in paying close attention to a thought, a memory, or an experience, and listening to it as closely as possible to see what music comes out of it. Like trying to draw a dream with sound and words.”
Despite being a somewhat ubiquitous character in the Los Angeles music scene, Name has maintained a consistently shadowy, mysterious persona. He has defiantly opted out of social media and is moving further away from conventional rock spaces, rarely playing live, and even then, often to improvise. His practice refuses social pressures when seen as detrimental to his artistic instincts, a rare and risky path for an artist in today’s world, but a bold and noteworthy one. So it should come as no surprise that Fabulous Soundtracks sounds nothing like the music his peers are making, if he can be said to really have any. For all of its earnestness, the album is a wildly fun and versatile listen; as a soundtrack to your own IRL life of headless movements and sensations, maybe it can influence you to actually notice some of them. Or give it a listen somewhere dark and still if you can find such a place, and mix it into your dreams.
