Here is an incomplete cast of characters to fill out The dumb, Young Jesus' defiant seventh album: a pair of debauched outlaws, an elderly man who relies entirely on his children, a doctor caught trolling his patient's social media and, on 'MOTY', a menagerie of garden-variety misogynists, hypocrites and insecure mama's boys posing as alpha males. Oh, and the person who gets lost in memories of being abused as a child and ends up, decades later, standing over a dog they just beat.
However, the most irritating characters are the ones John Rossiter allows us to believe he is himself – artists who have seen firsthand the saving powers of art and seen it congeal into condescension, delusions of grandeur and distaste for people who they look more like him. While Rossiter has not confirmed whether any of the The dumb it's autobiographical, it's an irresistible, indelible product of a man who had to question his every artistic motivation before making the most vital album of his life.
Rossiter's questioning approach—to pop music, to literature, to gender norms, to the social contract, to truth itself—serves as a connective tissue throughout Young Jesus' fascinating discography, which has earned legitimate comparisons to the Hold Steady, Talk Talk and Albert. Ayler. But there's also one remnant of Rossiter's formative days as a hard-nosed Midwestern garage rocker: the urge to blow everything up on the brink of a conventional hit. After 2015 Grows/Decomposes brought Young Jesus' initial phase as Chicagoland barstool bars to a wider audience, Rossiter moved to Los Angeles and did what transplants do: experimented with spirituality, got into free jazz and started book clubs. A trilogy of exploratory albums followed, each tantalizingly close to a masterpiece. But due to exhaustion—or simply a sense that Young Jesus' incarnation as a post-rock jam band had become its own formula—Rossiter disbanded the group and released the stripped-down Shepherd's Head; Like all Young Jesus albums, it was transitional, but this was the first time that Rossiter was unsure of his direction.
The dumb does not have this problem. The opening duet of “Brenda & Diane” and “Two Brothers” takes Young Jesus back to his roots—glittering acoustic strums and brassy synth washes, a rugged guy singing off-the-cuff about the downtrodden trying to protect their dignity, the stuff that take place. called “heartland rock” in 2024. surely someone as studious as Rossiter recognizes the evocative nature of their respective titles. While most of Young Jesus' work at Saddle Creek was conducted in dialectical, occult philosophical tracts and 15-minute jamming sessions, The dumb he gets straight to the point, with Rossiter trusting to direct statements – “True love is a bit like hell,” the damned American Dream, concepts dismissed as clichés until time and experience reveal their enduring truth. Toward the end of “Two Brothers,” Rossiter meets a humble gardener who works the Earth to get closer to God, which would be very literary if Rossiter hadn't temporarily given up music to study permaculture.
