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Review: San Fermin, 'Jackrabbit'

Jackrabbit
Courtesy of the artist
Jackrabbit

San Fermin's 2013 debut brims over with ideas: The brainchild of one guy, classically trained Brooklyn composer and multi-instrumentalist Ellis Ludwig-Leone, it's a nearly hourlong feast of gorgeous chamber-pop storytelling. Ludwig-Leone doesn't sing on San Fermin — those duties are turned over to Allen Tate, whose voice often recalls that of Bill Callahan, and to the women of Lucius — but that album's vision is one entirely of his making.

On Jackrabbit, Ludwig-Leone's vision stretches to accommodate San Fermin's own growth: Though Lucius has been replaced by a single voice (belonging to Charlene Kaye), the band has officially swelled to a more-or-less full-time octet, whose many live performances together have helped give San Fermin's music a looser, nimbler feel. Some of the prettily precise, mannered grandiosity of San Fermin moves aside to make room for grittier energy, while Jackrabbit roots around for big ideas amid arrangements that clamor and storm.

Conflict brews throughout Jackrabbit, which opens, unsettlingly enough, with a death in the woods near a school ("The Woods"). From there, Kaye and Tate take turns touring the underside of the human psyche — "Gotta get out of my head tonight," the latter sings in "Emily," echoing a recurring theme — en route to "Billy Bibbit," in which the singers implore the titular Billy to "get out of your mind" (there it is again) and "give in to love." Even if Kaye didn't throw in the helpful reminder that "we're all gonna die," the rest of Jackrabbit is there to make clear that even the tidiest, most hopeful epiphanies come with a journey and a cost.

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Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)