Jack Stauber - "HiLo" Review

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Jack Stauber - “HiLo” Album Review
Link to the Album: https://jackstauber.bandcamp.com/album/hilo

My Score:  3 / 10

	Nostalgic qualities in music tend to be lost on me. Although I can often appreciate these qualities as interesting or fun, I feel as though more often than not these sounds try to appeal to an emotion or sense that I don’t actually possess or have yet to experience. I’ve never really had that feeling of “Whoa, I’m six years old again watching VHS tapes on the bulky CRT TV in my dad’s office” that others seem to find in so many of the increasingly common artists that use these lo-fi tropes.
	However, earlier this year when a Jack Stauber animation about a girl learning swear words was recommended to me by YouTube, I started to feel my nostalgic sense awakening.	Watching more of his videos, Jack’s animation style stuck with me quickly, but I found the most joy in Jack’s smaller details. The VHS low quality, the bizarre color palettes, and the awkward voice acting allowed me to really feel immersed in this new world I had happened upon, a world all too reminiscent of my childhood; A true nostalgic trip.	The crowning jewel of Jack’s creations are the small jingles accompanying many of his videos. Often no more than 20-30 seconds in length, these jingles are amazingly charming with wacky lyrics and creative arrangements, made all the more charismatic by the VHS quality. I was, and even still am, hooked on these jingles. So when I saw Jack has a Bandcamp page, and he began dropping teasers for an upcoming new album, I was hyped. I was craving more of his sound, and I found the older releases on Jack’s Bandcamp to be pretty underwhelming.	I went into this album hoping to love it, expecting to like it, and I left the album disappointed enough that I’m writing this, my first ever review, in the hopes of putting my thoughts together more cohesively so that I can understand myself; Why is this album such a letdown?
	First off, not as important perhaps but just as noticeable an issue to get out of the way, the production and presentation of this album are overly mediocre. The word that really comes to mind is amateurish as Jack’s arrangements are flat and empty sounding more often than not, and often times simple issues such as the volume of the vocals seem overlooked. I could almost overlook the production if the performances weren’t also inconsistent but the too-frequent guitar flubs and low energy vocals scattered on the album combine with the presentation to give me a sense that very little care was actually given to the recording of this album.	But the songs, are they any good? Not really. There are too many very slow and mellow pop ballads that rely on extremely similar instrumentation and just end up sounding the same. The middle 6 songs of the album could be all one track as far as I’m concerned, it just drags on and on as run-of-the-mill “indie pop” sounds. We don’t have the charm of the lo-fi sound or the quirky images present in his YouTube works, and apparently that means we don’t get the fun energy or inspiration that Jack has shown himself capable of either. The lyrics have their moments, blending together mundane and curious ideas to create passages that require a bit of thought, but the small oddities in Jack’s words are kind of undermined by his generic delivery and the album’s generally dull nature.	There are high points in this album though. Small spikes of creativity are seasoned into the album, often shown through Jack’s vocal performances and small jazzy sections of songs that unfortunately work against themselves when contrasted to rest of the work they’re attached to. These moments can just come off as a bit pretentious when they’re used to transition less thought out segments of the songs, and mixed too monotone to be really enjoyable on their own. This is particularly frustrating when I can almost hear the wonder of his micro-songs being chased but then left to kind of unsatisfactorily give way to more empty, barely spacey pop guitar passages that just leave me hungry for Jack’s YouTube videos.
	Overall, I much rather would have just had a proper full release of all of the jingles Jack has made over the past three months or so. This album just shows me that Jack’s talents may not work well in this medium, as out of the album’s 13 tracks I would consider there to be only 2 or 3 tracks worth of really good material that I would be content with as a Jack Stauber release. Too much of the album is just so uninspired and lacking in the creativity and vision that Jack has shown himself capable of. While Jack attempting a different sound with his albums is somewhat commendable I suppose, these attempts are just blatantly not of the quality Jack has showed us in the past.
	I hope Jack finds a way to work the inspiration of his jingles into his future album endeavors, but in the meantime, I can’t recommend his YouTube channel enough. His videos “Fighter”, “Al Dente”, and “Bandaid” are my favorites, and listening to them again now just hits home the point for me that this album is disappointing. I hope “HiLo” is not representative of what Jack thinks he’s capable of and I hope in his next projects, the dull tone set by “HiLo” is discarded as he improves as a songwriter and producer.
	But only time will tell, and currently this album kind of blows. Sorry Jack. I’m a big fan, I promise.