Christmas Island

Personnel: Sean Bonnette (vocals, acoustic guitar); Preston Bryant (vocals, electric guitar, classical guitar, piano, harpsichord, Hammond b-3 organ, Mellotron, waterphone); Ben Gallaty (vocals, marimba, upright bass, electric bass); Dylan Cook (mandolin); Mark Glick (cello); Deacon Batchelor (drums, surdo, percussion).
Recording information: Elmwood Recording (06/2013).
Since their humble origin as a teenage duo in 2005, Phoenix-based lo-fi folk-punk act Andrew Jackson Jihad have released a literal assault of albums, EPs, singles, and compilation tracks, gaining them a loyal underground following as they've toured their way across the U.S. and Europe numerous times. Led by the hyperactive and lyrically imaginative Sean Bonnette, AJJ play an often spazzy and obscurist take on the kind of wordy, urgently delivered indie folk introduced by John Darnielle's project the Mountain Goats in the 1990s. In both vocal delivery and style, Darnielle's music still remains the most obvious of AJJ's influences, though they've also adapted much of the fuzzy instrumental experimentalism of acknowledged heroes Neutral Milk Hotel. For their fifth full-length, 2014's Christmas Island, the band worked with producer John Congleton, whose own music as the Paper Chase follows a similar path of D.I.Y. adventurousness. Like the mishmash painting of brightly colored trinkets and tchotchkes that adorns the album's cover, Christmas Island is a loose assortment of occasionally humorous Dadaist lyrics sung over ably strummed indie pop that includes cellos, acoustic guitars, and mandolins, among other disparate instrumentation. Many of the songs are quite catchy, like the aggressive opener "Temple Grandin" and the almost sweet "Do, Re and Me." Whether or not you buy into their distinctive style, the one thing that can be said for sure about AJJ is their total commitment to their own ethos. They do what they do with purpose. ~ Timothy Monger