Day Wave
Headcase
(Self-released)
B
Headcase plays as musically composed and mature as its creator confesses he’s yet to become in real life. “What am I good for? / Somebody tell me / I don’t know anymore” Jackson Phillips shrugs under a tight, flannel comforter of What a Pleasure-era Beach Fossils guitar pop in “Nothing at All,” tossing and turning because he doesn’t have any responsibilities to wake up and take care of anyway. Listless transition lyrically bubbles through the crisp, diet-soda-fizz indie rock of Phillips’ debut EP as Day Wave, sweetness going sour and going sweet again. Every chord and key is caked in precisely calibrated Instagram filter sepia, ringing out and longing for the days when he longed for the future … a state otherwise known as your mid-20s.
The temperature of the recordings hints at the gloom clouding Phillips’ head and words — beach days remembered behind a dewy October window, echoes of a cold East Coast bouncing off his shyly sunny Bay Area sensibilities. Carefree surf songs tumbled through ’80s coming-of-age nostalgia, the songs glimmer like the tide rolling in or a character coming into his or herself, the dockside coaster cheers and hollers muffled into cooing hums not unlike The Drums’ earliest output. He’s an optimist at the end of the day, after all, more of a confused kid than chewed-up burnout (even if “Total Zombie” outwardly claims the latter).
The title is apt in that way; the mood, message, and interplay of each sitting at odds. Headspace arrives as a sidebar from his work has one-half of Carousel, a disco-teased electro-pop duo that has been tasked to providing glossy, confident runway stomping backdrops to ABC Family and MTV programming. The projects play against each other in direct opposition, youth coming and going like the whirring shrieks of joy turned visions of your childhood gnawed at by rust. If Carousel was at least a passing brush with fame, then Day Wave is the disillusionment with what any of that means.
But the playful glint and glimmer casting out behind those doe eyes is that of knowing self-deprecation. The heightened self-awareness and emotional acuity tap into an even younger self, pubescent sensitivity channeling through songs about girls and growing up and how each one has made the other harder. Mopey, he is, drifting through the languid title track closer. But the crushing weight of it is otherwise letting up, a wink acknowledging just how silly it all is, convinced that getting the target of affections to smile and sing-along is more effective than getting her to collapse in his arms out of shared despair.
He’s a rock star zippered up in a tortured teenage soul, as evidenced by the sheer audaciousness of “Drag,” the tear-tempered drum loops and puddled admissions somehow reading more road-trip soundtrack than bedroom diary confessional. “We Try but We Don’t Fit In” again preaches the same message of hope out of hopelessness, aim out of aimlessness. It’s universal and inclusive in that way. “We try / we try” Phillips repeats over and over again, accepting that his and others’ battle for purpose isn’t one that is ever necessarily won or lost, but that fighting for it might just be enough.
