GROOVE ART FEATURE

Clowns is decidedly less polished than A Sunlit Place but that ends up working to its credit, as we find ourselves in 2025 wading through a morass of indistinguishable AI dogshit and made-for-TikTok cookie-cutter pop stylings. This record feels immensely human, particularly in its more vulnerable moments. Throughout, you can hear the decisions being made, you can almost picture the players chuckling at their best decisions, high-fiving when an arrangement comes together, and breathing deep as the weight of certain topics sets in.

Starting off with “Heading Out In All Directions” sets the stage - at first it feels like a campfire ballad, the intimate vocal drawing you in before the track blooms into something broader. The arrangement is delicate and alluring, and Jose’s attack is somewhere between cowboy troubador and folk cafe singer-songwriter. Heading out in all directions, I’ll never be right here again also serves as something of a preparatory declaration - this record contains multitudes, and Jose doesn’t often tread the same ground twice.

“When Will I See You Again” is a crisp indie rock earworm, an apt choice for the leadoff single, with its crunchy riffs and deliberate groove. The mournful hook in the refrain resolves on a hopeful note, and barely-there backing vocals add to the pensive feel. It’s a great addition to a roster of killer singles, and gives casual listeners something they can sink their teeth into early.

In “Ends Up (Money Still Burns)” Jose breaks out a swanky groove and some of his best wry lyricism. Strike a match, watch the world turn, how it ends up, money still burns he spits as the bass swaggers through the track behind him. This track features some of the most effective arrangement work, all simplicity and tasteful decisions in service of a groove that didn’t need much help.

“Furniture Song” is a delightful morsel of chipper dive bar fare, an infectious progression and a hook that will make you sing along quickly, while leaving you wondering what the story is. Linen matched the pillow, carpet fit the floor, I guess I’ll fit through the door is a deliriously funny line for something so puzzling.

“Listen Listen Too” is probably my favorite track on the record, and it’s the first time I ever remember thinking that Jose shares some common turf with Counting Crows. Both the text and the delivery are noticeably Duritz-esque, and the whole thing is a deeply beautiful declaration of common humanity. Talk to someone, listen listen too, help them find the strength they never knew is a disarmingly simple expression of how loneliness feels like quicksand, but a branch to pull you out is always just one person away, if we could all see ourselves in one another.

You’ll never make the headlines, if you’re lucky, where your worst decision is the thing most people see…srangers think they know, but they heard the story sideways. Stories need a bad guy - that’s me. Thus begins the alt-country “Let Them Talk”, a dark horse for the bravest and most vulnerable thing Jose has ever published. It’s beautifully done on a purely musical level, and it’s the sort of satisfying that can’t be replicated by any AI slop, nor by anyone overly concerned with cultivating a social media identity for a viral moment. This is a songwriter cutting themselves open and putting it on paper. It’s immensely attractive.

“Everything I Was Looking For” and “I’m At Peace” feel at first blush like a contradiction, but on further listens it plays more like a clever exploration of the way we all struggle to hold onto the mindset we want. How you can know you’ve got it made, and still fall periodically into grasping, searching, yearning, regretting… how you can recognize the usefulness of a perpetually dissatisfied spirit while also seeing it as the illusion it is.

Or perhaps it’s a statement of how we long to mine deeper into the things we’ve obtained, the loves we’ve captured, to experience it even more fully, to uncover more riches on our own territory. It’s a testament to Jose’s writing that your mind can go off on any number of tangents while listening.

It all wraps up on “Distal”, maybe the best candidate on the record for some sync licensing success. The track feels perfect for any number of indie art house films. The simple progression is expertly served by the swelling arrangement, and Jose’s emotionally raw delivery. In my palm, my lifeline splits and folds, I have lived the difference between growing up and growing old… another devastatingly vulnerable, crushingly honest, hauntingly gorgeous bit of writing from one of the finest artists in the independent music scene.

Jack Jose has never failed to make me think, leave me smiling, make me want to be better as an artist, and make me rejoice for the real democratization of art - not the accessibility of effortless generative slop, but the affordability of recording gear and the myriad YouTube tutorials, the access to distribution for anyone with a bit of wherewithal and a bit of cash, and the ability to spread the word on social media. Artists like Jose deserve to have a platform and an outlet, and we’ll keep shouting to anyone who can hear that he’s worth the listen.