Ears Wide Open: Jake Troth
Kevin Bronson on
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No idea where Jake Troth might end up ranking in the vast spectrum of JTs, but judging from the music on his debut album it could be anyplace. The North Carolina-bred, L.A.-based art-schooler seems equally comfortable in classic pop, electro and hip-hop worlds, having cut his teeth writing, producing and remixing for film and TV and collaborating with rap heavyweights. Indeed, a 2010 press bulletin heralded an impending debut album, along with a couple of tunes made with songwriter/producer Alex Goose, the Britpop-leaning “Sunday Smile” and the cringe-worthy “Material Things.” Fast-forward to now, and the 25-year-old has “Double Black Diamond” ready for release early next year. The implied warning in the title shouldn’t scare you off. Troth, whose has said his music is equally informed by his parents’ classics, his brother’s hip-hop and his friends’ heavy metal (his first band was called Glass Casket), knows his way around pop songs, although not necessarily the intricacies of the heart. Here’s betting Troth’s romance-obsessed and at times Beatles-inflected narratives make him a heartthrob..
||| Stream: “Real Life Thing” and “Vacay”
||| Also: Stream the rest of his album on his website.
||| Live: Jake Troth performs Monday at It’s a School Night at Bardot (and screens his short film “Double Black Diamond”)
||| Watch: After the jump, check out the video for “On My Way,” in which Troth and a hardy gang of senior citizens comes to the rescue of a damsel in distress:
[…] the time go? When we last issued a dispatch on L.A.-based singer-songwriter-producer Jake Troth, it was November 2013. The release of his album “Double Black Diamond” seemed imminent and he screened his […]
[…] was even this brilliant short film made for it — but it apparently was scotched, along with the links to the promotional singles that were issued beforehand. It was a more ambitious, if not better, album than “It Is As If,” but who knows what […]