From the brooding opener ‘Young Leather’, ‘A Little Death’ – the third full-length by Texas based My Jerusalem – presents itself as fundamentally unclassifiable. The first album since transitioning from an artistic collective to a firmly cemented band, the record travels from ‘Rabbit Rabbit’’s commercial hooks to the driving tempo of ‘Dominoes’, and from the tortured ‘No One Gonna Give You Love’ to the expansive ‘Candy Lions’. It touches on Springsteen-esque Americana, quirky pop hooks that channel the late David Bowie and the sprawling sound of underground indie superstars The National.
Led by vocalist Jeff Klein’s often agonising, sometimes sultry tones and displaying a distinctly retrospective sound, ‘A Little Death’ is dark and claustrophobic. It’s presented as an ode to death and sex, dividing itself between the sizzling passion of one and the suffocating anguish of the other. Encompassed under a doom-pop umbrella, ‘A Little Death’ is ultimately a thing of understated beauty, destined to exist between the established consciousness of musical styles.
BEN TIPPLE