Thrifty Astronaut

Related Content

• Brian Jonestown Massacre's Anton Newcombe on Beck, living in Germany and Bright Channel
  May 8, 2012
• Saturday Night Live: The best, worst and most controversial performances
  March 11, 2012
• Mile Highlights: Denver/Boulder area concert news, local radio playlists and top album sales
  March 20, 2012
• Thrifty Astronaut, February 17 at the Meadowlark
  February 17, 2011
• The Brian Jonestown Massacre at the Bluebird Theater, 5/8/12
  May 9, 2012

More About

• Nick Jones
• Jad Fair
• The Magnetic Fields
• Space Technology
• Science and Technology

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

On Apple-Eaters, Thrifty Astronaut's Nick Jones has pushed himself a little in terms of production, but he's done so without losing the rough edges that have always made his songwriting so compelling. The title track has lyrics and a vocal delivery worthy of Jad Fair, but the music is more akin to a strange hybrid of early Beck and Camper Van Beethoven. "Go with your innocence, cling to your ignorance," the refrain from "Teenage Sunburns," could be the epigram of the album, summing up Jones's attitude toward both the extreme feelings and the misplaced romanticism one experiences in adolescence and early adulthood. On "Everything Is Shit," he seems to channel 69 Love Songs-era Magnetic Fields with a deep-voiced and paradoxically compelling tone of disengagement. Whimsical, insightful, pointed and informed by an undercurrent of compassion, these songs demand repeated listens.