La La La Marinero

• 1 La La La 03:11
• 2 Cruz 03:46
• 3 Lost Angel 00:26
• 4 Taquero 03:24
• 5 Dream Suite 03:54
• 6 The Mystery of Miss Mari Jane 04:01
• 7 Cha Cha Cha 00:51
• 8 Sea Changes 04:01
• 9 Cinema Lover 03:44
• 10 Die Again, Yesterday 03:52
• 11 Hollywood Ten 04:29
• 12 Pocha Pachanga 03:14
• Total Runtime 38:53

Info for La La La

As Jess Sylvester finished his Hardly Art debut as Marinero in the fall of 2020, he realized it was time for a change. Sylvester grew up in Marin County, on the doorstep of San Francisco. It was a nurturing community for a high-school punk with a pompadour and, later, for a sober songwriter with a proclivity for moody psychedelia. But he wanted to be challenged and inspired by a new setting and scenario around strangers who prompted him to approach his music in unexpected ways. So in September 2020, as the world continued to reel in lockdown, Sylvester headed several hours south to Los Angeles, a city that, despite the relative proximity, the film buff knew largely from classic and cult films situated there. When he arrived, he kept digging into that cinematic past—Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, with John Williams’ classic theme, or classic 90s movies about East LA, many featuring Edward James Olmos. They shaped his understanding of his new town just as it began to open.

This is one pillar of the multivalent and endlessly lush La La La, Marinero’s new album about sobriety, identity, and fantasy that is playfully named both for the city that helped shape it and the sophisticated pop it contains. Sylvester wrote about characters outside of himself, whether considering the heroine reckoning with her own version of keeping clean or the screenwriters whose work was deemed communist simply as a political convenience. He linked those songs with motivational anthems about self-acceptance and playful numbers about flirting through food, shaping a 12-song set rich with humor, empathy, and encouragement.

Sure, La La La is a continuation of the slippery genre play Sylvester started with 2021’s Hella Love, 2019’s Trópico de Cáncer, or even before that. But it also feels like a fresh beginning for Marinero, as Sylvester realizes how boundless this project can be. He began to think about the music of his childhood, how his mother is from San Francisco with Mexican roots, and how he’d heard so much salsa growing up as an impetuous teenager. So he wrote “Taquero,” a red-hot salsa tune that uses tacos and their trappings as a source of endless metaphors for come-ons. And then there was the Ray Barreto or Santana-inspired “Pocha Pachanga,” with organ gliding and percussion pulsing beneath his yearning vocals, warped as if by desert winds. In Los Angeles, he found a wealth of players who spoke this music like language itself (including Chicano Batman’s Eduardo Arenas), all ready to play with and push these familiar forms. Sylvester has also been sober for 21 years, since a cross-country sojourn to attend college in Boston ended in a chemical haze. Today, he sees friends facing the same decisions he made two decades ago, and he brings bits of that experience to bear in songs that feel like self-help anthems. Recorded with a musical hero (and labelmate) of his, Chris Cohen, “Sea Changes” feels like sunshine breaking through dark clouds, as Sylvester acknowledges the newfound confidence and clarity in a friend who has stepped away from destructive habits. “Sea changes, smooth sailing/In your wake/There’s something about you now,” sings Sylvester, the son of a sailor from Massachusetts who is an unabashed fan of wordplay and nautical jokes, in a moment as bright as a drive along the California coast. Laced with harp and jeweled with Wurlitzer, “Dream Suite” is a love song for the down and out, for those struggling with letting go of their past in search of a brighter future. “Take a chance on something new,” he sings, his voice gliding for a high note like he’s reaching out to grab someone’s hand. “Just keep holding on.”

In the past, Sylvester has been intractably linked to his identity as a Mexican-American, born to parents from Mexico and Irish- American descent who settled in San Francisco. That can be limiting, of course, tying him to notions of sound and style that aren’t always correct. On La La La, he simultaneously steps into and out of those preconceptions, singing tracks above salsa in joyous Spanish or pondering the dynamics of the Hollywood Ten and blacklists above mysterious lap steel and teasing trumpet. His identity, then, should now be clear: He is a Californian, making music shaped by the diversity of encounters and experiences that are a central part of that state’s fabric. Never before has he presented himself so fully and unabashedly on tape as with La La La, an album Sylvester built with new inspirations to deliver new charms.

Jess Sylvester, vocals
Eduardo Arenas of Chicano Batman, bass, guitar, vocals
Chris Cohen, guitar, vocals
Shana Cleveland, guitar, vocals

Recorded at Savannah Studios in Los Angeles
Produced by Jess Sylvester and Jason Kick

Jess Sylvester
born to parents of Mexican and Irish-American descent who settled in San Francisco, has sometimes encountered preconceived notions of his sound and style that aren’t correct. On La La La, he simultaneously steps into and out of those preconceptions, singing tracks above salsa in joyous Spanish or pondering the dynamics of the Hollywood Ten and blacklists above mysterious lap steel and teasing trumpet. His identity should now be clear: He is a Californian, making music shaped by the diversity of encounters and experiences that are a central part of that state’s fabric. Never before has he presented himself so fully and unabashedly on tape as with La La La, an album Sylvester built with new inspirations to deliver new charms.

For singer-songwriter Jess Sylvester, growing up in the Bay Area and discovering Mexico has allowed him to create music that brings together diverse and seemingly disparate influences that reflect on chicanx realities. Jess grew up listening to artists such as Malo, Santana, and Trio Los Panchos, yet his musical world expanded into artists like the Beach Boys and the Beatles. He began playing in local punk and hardcore bands like Tiger Uppercut!, Violet Change, and Crisis Man. Then, Jess co-founded Francisco y Madero after meeting new friends on a destined trip to Guadalajara, which gave him new ways to articulate his own experiences, exploring chicanx and pochx perspectives with the group’s “cholo-fi” sound. His newest record, Tròpico de Càncer (on San Jose’s own Needle to the Groove Records), recorded under the solo handle, Marinero, is a further composite of all his musical influences and experiences, including a love for Brazil’s Tropicalia movement. More so, however, he says this is the first record where he turned more inward and is his first honest cry for what is going on with him.

“Before I even picked up a guitar I wanted to be a songwriter. I don’t know why, as I didn’t have [role] models or friends that were songwriters. Spending time in México really helped me grasp my own concept of identity, both musically and personally. It allowed me to make latinx music and pull from influences that I grew up hearing in my home.”

This album contains no booklet.