Jo Passed – Their Prime

In the immortal words of LCD Soundsystem, everybody makes mistakes.

Generous though it is, that is not a maxim that has ever been regularly ascribed to Sub Pop because it hasn’t ever needed to be; even the signings of theirs that look like misfires on the face of things end up turning out out to be winners. Whether it was them giving The Head and the Heart’s oh-so-earnest Americana a leg-up in 2011, or their peculiar signing of Los Angeles noise rock three-piece Moaning, who exclusively take their cues from groups that have done everything they do better and more authentically within the past decade, whether living (A Place to Bury Strangers) or, effectively speaking, dead in the water (Women). 

In taking Jo Passed under their wing, it feels as if Sub Pop have made another of those once-in-a-blue-moon slip-ups. Talk about hipster clichés – this Vancouver outfit spill them out as if they were on the ayahuasca trip they’ve doubtless told all their mates they’ve been on, from MDM's hazy take on drugs to the lazy lash-out of Millennial Trash Blues. All of this might be salvageable if the songs sounded alright, and they do, and that’s just it – Their Prime actually feels empty, and all the lovely melodic guitars go to waste with not a lot to ground them.

Instead, they vie for the same precious high-end space as the rest of the instrumentation. Musically, the good ideas are palpable; a shame, then, that the lyrical ones take such banal centre stage.