The obsessed performing arts student is one of Hollywood’s favorite clichés. Movies like Whiplash, The Perfection, and Nocturne verge on melodrama, detailing the oppressive confines of classical training to varying degrees of absurdity. Their tortured protagonists meet one of two fates: triumph or crack-up. UK duo Jockstrap sound like they are flailing toward both. Graduates of London’s prestigious Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye have made a career of tearing down the academy walls. Their early revolt was scrappy and hardheaded; 2020’s Wicked City EP sounded like two star pupils lashing out, constructing jagged sculptures of string instruments and synthesizers. On their long-awaited debut album, I Love You Jennifer B, they refine their plan of attack. With the help of an 18-piece orchestra, Jockstrap stage elaborate, theatrical scenes atop the conservatory rubble.
Jockstrap’s earliest music was clever but disjointed. Ellery, who studied jazz violin at Guildhall, is the duo’s principal songwriter, and since the release of their first EP, 2018’s Love Is the Key to the City, it’s been clear that she has an advanced ear for pop structure of a certain vintage. In the opening minutes of “Joy,” she invoked the orchestral balladry of Van Dyke Parks and Harry Nilsson before Skye hijacked the song. He stripped it down to a few programmed bleeps and pitched up Ellery’s voice until she wheezed like a helium huffer: “Kiss me, fuck me, make much of me!” On Wicked City, Jockstrap plunged deeper into identity crisis; the songs were more intricate, lurching from gnarly EDM beats to impressionist piano sketches.
The band is still rummaging through a trunk of masks, but the characters in I Love You Jennifer B’s vaudevillian drama have better lines. Ellery stands downstage, discreetly changing costumes as a backdrop rolls in for the next scene. On the medieval dirge “Lancaster Court,” she plays the chamber-bound maiden plotting her escape. Plasticky rattles and whomped war drums jostle a plucked guitar phrase, as Ellery tiptoes from whisper to chapel soprano. On highlight “Greatest Hits,” she reigns as Disco Queen, dripping in sequins and rotating on a motorized bed. As Ellery does Donna Summer-at-La Scala, Skye slips in raygun synths, salt-shaker snares, and piano pulses straight from Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You.” It’s a pop soap opera shot with a smear of Vaseline on the lens. From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jockstrap-i-love-you-jennifer-b/
