Pitchfork

It's not supposed to be this simple. Is it? So far Jeremy Jay, the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter signed to K Records, has covered a lot of ground without revealing much specific about himself, his influences, or where he might ultimately be planning to take us. On the title track from his 2008 Airwalker EP, he sings about, um, walking on air-- with the echoey, vaguely ominous lockstep of an early Factory 7". On "Beautiful Rebel", the first single from full-length debut A Place Where We Can Go, he sings about a beautiful rebel-- with garage rock's scuzz and Jonathan Richman's wide-eyed 1950s romance. And on latest non-album single "Alpha Rhythm", Jay just wants you to "dance, dance, dance."

Now, Jay might not be the type to overshare, but his limited output so far rarely fails to tap into some of pop's fundamental ideals, funneling them through a distinct, noirish aesthetic. "Alpha Rhythm" takes its title from the regular oscillations of human brain waves, and metronomic drums that wouldn't have been out of place on the last Shocking Pinks album set the pace, beneath "Airwalker"-like clockwork guitars, some haphazard lead-guitar fills, fingers snapping, and Jay's brief, mostly wordless vocals. If it's about dancing, it's also about being about dancing-- or else it's about not having to be "about" anything at all. Jay's terseness, like the lonely spaces of his austere production, reveals as much as it withholds, trusting the singer's secrets to pop archetypes and our own wandering imaginations. That's where I'm a Viking.