Lifetime goes record shopping. Photo via Jade Tree.
It's been an unusually busy month for the great Delaware label Jade Tree. First, they dropped their entire discography on Bandcamp for our listening pleasure (including classics like Cap'n Jazz's Analphabetapolothology, the Promise Ring's Nothing Feels Good, and Jets to Brazil's Orange Rhyming Dictionary). Then, in an op-ed for Billboard, co-founder Darren Walters revealed that the seemingly defunct label was actually still in operation—and gearing up for a relatively busy year. "Some people thought Jade Tree stopped releasing records," he wrote. "Some think Jade Tree is making a comeback. Neither is true. The label was always here, operating, maintaining. So what is Jade Tree's next move? The release schedule is ramping up and the next few months will see an increased output which will dwarf the last few years."
This is cause for some sort of celebration, though we didn't really want to do a "15 Best Jade Tree Albums" list—you probably don't need another lecture on the must-own status of Turning Point's Discography, Pedro the Lion's Control, or Lifetime's Jersey’s Best Dancers. (Though if you do, we repeat: They're all on Bandcamp now.) So here are our favorite moments that don’t really have a place in the canon: the weird side projects, the enduring one-offs, the split EPs. Below, check out our list, complete with the requisite misty-eyed reminiscences of college.
Onelinedrawing: “Stay”
I’ve always appreciated Jonah Matranga from afar (no pun intended); out of everyone who’s managed to be a primary influence on the Deftones, contribute guest vocals on a Lupe Fiasco album and make the best Jimmy Eat World song of the past five years, I’d reckon he’s the best of the lot. That’s a pretty full career, and you can get the wide range of it on Onelinedrawing’s last album The Volunteers, which on the red side of the ledger, contains “Livin’ Small”, a doe-eyed lament where Matranga frets about DIY punk ideals and quotes “It’s All About the Benjamins”. It’s either the funniest Dashboard Confessional parody or one of the worst songs on a CD I bought with my own money. But you get the supernaturally sweet “Stay,” whose plush, endlessly echoing guitar lines envelop you like life-size-teddy-bear hug. —Ian Cohen
Owls: “Everyone Is My Friend”
A few years ago, my girlfriend and I went back to my alma mater for a wedding and in preparation for the drive from Dulles, I put together a playlist summarized as “the kind of mix I might’ve made you in college.” Which would have included Tim Kinsella’s most “pop” song, one whose climactic lyric demonstrated the impotent sort of longing I had at the time for a meaningful relationship—“It’s not impossible to think of you thinking of me.” The verdict: “It’s catchy, but why does he sing like that?” I think she subsequently fast-forwarded it to get to the song from Gomez’s In Our Gun. —I.C.
Zero Zero: “True Zero”
There comes a time in every punk’s life when he starts to realize he prefers music that sounds nothing like the kind he actually makes. Specifically, that time came in 2001 for Lifetime’s Ari Katz; but rather than namedropping Stereolab in interviews, the perpetually slurred New Jerseyan went ahead and actually tried to make a Stereolab album. And the result was precisely “Stereolab, if a perpetually slurred New Jerseyan was on vocals.” —I.C.
Miighty Flashlight: “Go On. Die. It’s Easy.”
Miighty Flashlight was a more successful reinvention, if a far more unlikely one—how about the bassist from Rites of Spring making a collection of scuffed, surreal Beck-ish indie folk on his Powerbook in 2002? If you’re gonna drop $5 on something here, I’d wholeheartedly recommend this one, seeing that it’s so obscure you can’t even get it from what.cd. —I.C.
My Morning Jacket: “O Is The One That Is Real”
Pedro the Lion’s “Bands with Managers” has one of indie rock’s realest opening lines of the decade ("Bands with managers are going places"), and during an audience Q&A in the middle of a David Bazan solo show, he revealed that it was actually inspired by... these guys? Who knows if My Morning Jacket had a manager in 2002, but they were definitely going places by the time they released this split with Songs: Ohia. While it would eventually find itself situated amidst My Morning Jacket’s tremendous, expansive fairgrounds rock on their monumental live LP Okonokos, the sinewy “O Is The One That Is Real” is a strange and surprising artifact, the one time where MMJ’s grain silo sounded like a post-punk meat locker. —I.C.
Snowden: “Anti-Anti”
A lot of bands sounded like this after 9/11: brooding, monotone vocals of disaffection, bass playing lead, guitars used for texture, the rhythm section playing a kind of downer disco, a projection of chilly, downcast urbanity. Snowden nailed that, but they were from Atlanta and it was 2006. Perhaps that’s indicative of how Jade Tree was responsible for often great and almost always unhip music, but this is the best Interpol song since Antics, so enjoy. —I.C.
Ester Drang: “If They Only Knew”
As Walters articulated in his Billboard op-ed, Jade Tree was a principled label that still had to keep up with the times. And in 2003, said times suggested that you couldn’t sound like Radiohead without sounding kinda like the Flaming Lips but also having a yen for Neil Young. Or, somehow Grandaddy became a replicable template and after The Sophtware Slump, Ester Drang was probably better at being Grandaddy than the genuine article. —I.C.
Denali: “French Mistake”
Look, Denali wasn’t a great band by any measure, most often a compelling frontwoman in search of a truly compelling tune amidst their earnest, atmospheric alt-indie that incorporated the requisite touches of trip-hop and Radiohead. But in a social situation when below-the-radar “Virginia rock” meant Agents of Good Roots, Carbon Leaf and Fighting fucking Gravity, Keeley Davis’ other project was an easier sell than Engine Down. —I.C.
These Arms Are Snakes: "Riding the Grape Dragon"
When Botch abruptly disappeared from the pantheon of mathy, metal-skewed hardcore bands in the early aughts, it was a serious blow to the community, but the band was just too damn good for its members to not soldier on in some fashion. In 2001, Minus the Bear kickstarted the coming deluge of Botch side projects with Dave Knudson's spidery, beer-goggled indie-pop, though it wasn't until These Arms Are Snakes debuted in 2003 with the This is Meant to Hurt You EP that fanboys got another taste of that heavy, sprawling sound the Seattleites made their name on. Oxeneers gets all the love in the These Arms discography, but "Riding the Grape Dragon" was the first official "oh, shit!" moment announcing the closest thing we'd get to a second coming of Botch. —Patric Fallon
Fucked Up: "David Comes to Life"
Challenger: "Unemployment"
If you get right down to it, Milemarker was really just a punk band with a taste for electronics and detuned angular riffs. But it was Burn Collector author Al Burian's sardonic fear of an impending dystopia monetized and sterilized by capitalism that gave the band its lifeblood, so, in that way, Challenger was a streamlined reimaging of Milemarker's apocalyptic drama. Moreover, Give People What They Want in Lethal Doses, Challenger's sole studio album, was also some serious fun, powerchord punk served straight to the heads fist pumping in the pit. The record is hardly lacking its share of pile-and-shout singalongs, perhaps the best of which closes out "Unemployment" with Burian yelling, "Hey man, it's not about the money /It's about getting what you deserve". —P.F.
Strike Anywhere: "Refusal"
Hard to believe that these Richmond agit-punks weren't huge at a time when At The Drive-In was an actual, legitimate Next Big Thing, but they've likely won some fans through a channel that proved far more effective than MTV over the next decade: of the three Strike Anywhere songs to appear in "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater", this was the first and the best. —I.C.
Turing Machine: "Flip-Book Oscilloscope"
You're not going to find another album in Jade Tree's discography that sounds anything like Turing Machine's debut LP, and yet A New Machine for Living is by all accounts the precursor to the label's sporadic flirtations with adventurous bands (Euphone, These Arms Are Snakes, Milemarker, Young Widows, etc.). The first time I heard the band's mind-numbing repetition, cyclical guitar riffs, electronic flourishes, and Swiss-watch rhythm section—held together by the late-great drummer Jerry Fuchs—was on "Flip-Book Oscilloscope", and it single handedly turned me on to the eight-armed leviathan known as math rock. Don Caballero, A Minor Forest, Oxes, June of 44, and Hella soon stole away my attentions, but Turing Machine will always be remembered as my first. —P.F.
Joan of Arc: "Ne Mosquitos Pas"
Treat this as ephemeral emo novelty if it helps: Joan of Arc's "Ne Mosquitos Pas" is probably the only good thing to surface from the overwrought and undercooked recording sessions that became The Gap's cockeyed and bloated art-rock. Admittedly, the song is marooned on an EP otherwise populated with childhood home recordings and assorted limp acoustic noodlings that make you wonder what deal Tim Kinsella made with the Devil to release basically whatever he wants on Jade Tree. "Ne Mosquitos Pas" is only slightly less tone-deaf and pretentious than most of The Gap, but between its jangly piano chords, smooth guitar plucks, and brilliantly bonkers lyrics, it's definitely a Joan of Arc moment worth remembering. —P.F.
Pedro the Lion: "Of Up and Coming Monarchs"
David Bazan will be remembered for Control and Achilles' Heel far more than its handful of under-praised predecessors, and that's totally fine—Pedro the Lion truly hit its stride once the sound of Bazan's guitars matched the gnarled, bottled-up frustration bubbling underneath his lyrics. If you're looking to dig deeper, though, the stripped-down, Seattle-born slowcore on It's Hard to Find a Friend is the calm breeze two years before Winners Never Quit heralded the coming storm. It wasn't originally released via Jade Tree when it first appeared in 1998, but the reissuing it received only three years later says a lot about the album's necessity in the lineage of Pedro the Lion. —P.F.
Young Widows: "Glad He Ate Her"
In the wake of Breather Resist's all-too-brief stint marauding the early aughts underground hardcore scene, Young Widows picked up their fiery baton and chucked it down a dank well of depravity into the dungeon of cacophonous noise-rock. Singer/guitarist Evan Patterson does his best impression of Steve Albini as the frontman for Daughters throughout Settle Down City, while the rest of the band renders their instruments sawdust and scrap metal to the tune of Jesus Lizard's Goat. But on songs like the anarchic "Glad He Ate Her", Young Widows hit their influences like a springboard instead of a landing pad. —P.F.
Songs: Ohia: "Translation"
Here's one for the Jason Molina completists. His sole contribution to a split EP with My Morning Jacket, Songs: Ohia's ambling "Translation" is no "Coxcomb Red" or "Didn't It Rain", but the quietly affecting voice and sparse guitar that define much of his best work are still intact amongst the song's synth drones and stuttered percussion. This 10-minute song isn't the only bit of backwoods singer/songwriter fare in the Jade Tree catalog (check out Micah P. Hinson and Cub Country if you need more of that), though it's quite possibly the best of the bunch. —P.F.