New Music: Jack Vaul - A Long Where Away

 

 

I had the good fortune to hear this little gem very recently, Mr. Vaul (of Adelaide, AU. Amusingly I neglected to mention much background when I originally posted this lol) was kind enough to drop it to us and I happily accepted the chance to do a post about it. My only other experience with Jack was through his work with Thorts as Thorts & Prayerz which is an amusing but ultimately dope little EP they did together. This is very much a different beast.

A Long Where Away is dark, hard hitting and heavy. Production tends towards melodic, brooding guitar driven dreariness with some moments of beauty, in many cases brought to you by vocalist rainforestcloudmachine like on the jaw dropping album closer "Castles", a meditation on isolation and loneliness which lyrically wouldn't be out of place on Pink Floyd's The Wall.

This seven track EP features a bit of everything for the modern indie rap consumer. Jack can certainly rip shit up crazy like on "Goldfishing" but his storytelling lyricism is notable as well, especially in places like the aforementioned "Castles" and in epic fantasy novel masquerading as hip hop track opener "The Notlands". Add to that some emotional awareness and mix all that up with a clear nice guy personality (he really wants us to get along as he states on "Snapcrackle"), some seriously banging production and catchy melodies and you have a very dope, very enjoyable album.

I'm pretty enthusiastic about dude. To be fair I haven't heard much. But I'm very intrigued. I would say if you're feeling nostalgic for those Sage Francis days and missing Cubbiebear then you're going to like A Long Where Away. And like I said Jack Vaul is super cool so he definitely deserves your ears and support!

Also, this is his first foray into physical albums, and El Gran E Records out of Texas is offering copies for those of you in the USA. Congratulations to him, that's totally awesome. All the rest check out his Bandcamp here, where he's got lots of free stuff as well for those of us who are apparently not getting a Christmas bonus this year and really not happy about it.