I Love You Jennifer B

I Love You Jennifer B is provocative and ambitious, testing attention while operating on a fine line between listenability and overkill. The way Jockstrap play with expectations keeps listeners on their toes. Trying to anticipate the next 180-degree turn or sudden zero to a hundred acceleration makes them an exciting listen.

It’s the first track that commands serious momentum, though the closer “50/50” isn’t too shabby either. ... Its novelty burns off by the halfway mark, but there’s a strong sense that here, at least, was a direction worth doubling down on. Kudos. The rest of the record is an over-calculated mess.

They round out the subtle complexities in the seemingly simple story of longing; a tip-toeing toybox melody reflecting the delicacy of the situation, digital glitches suggesting the distance between them, sighs that relay the inner conflict. This precision features throughout Jennifer B, and it’s thanks to these careful touches that each song connects on a deeper level, despite their structurelessness and unpredictability.

Ellery and Skye have managed cohesion amid the cacophony. I Love You Jennifer B is a dramatic outing that combines the modern, the classical and everything else in between.

A successfully adventurous debut that bears countless relistens.

This is an astonishing debut album, one to immerse yourself in and live with for weeks, if not months – an intoxicating statement which announces one of Britain’s most exciting new bands.

I Love You Jennifer B is pop at its most baffling, but its considered arrangement keeps the album not just listenable, but thrilling, even as it dives off of various sonic cliffs into the unknown.

On Jennifer B, plot twists play out like a delicious art school scandal. Just when you think these orchestra enfant terribles will stick to their notation books, Jockstrap scurry to the bridge and chuck every page into the Thames.

‘I Love You Jennifer B’ is the product of a voracious appetite to find the gaps in between the familiar, a record emblazoned with such pristine, disorienting, unsettling originality that at first, you don’t quite know what to do with it.

‘I Love You Jennifer B’ feels like everything that’s come before has just been a trial run. It’s bolder, more rewarding, and so much more cohesive.

While production high jinks threaten to override shapeshifting songs like Neon and Angst, the delicate balance between Ellery's lithe effectual voice and Skye's layered abstractions continues to confound expectations in singular skew-whiff fashion. [Oct 2022, p.89]

It’s positively thrilling to witness a band perpetually committed to pushing boundaries and creating music unlike anything else released before it.

On their debut album, I Love You Jennifer B, the duo show their beating heart, without sacrificing the chaos or creativity. ... It’s a labyrinth of a pop album.