Stream: JR JR, ‘Dumb Myself Down’

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JR JR (Photo by Brantley Gutierrez)
JR JR (Photo by Brantley Gutierrez)

With their former moniker (Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.) squarely in the rear-view mirror, Detroit-formed duo JR JR, as they are now known, still put the pedal to the metal when it comes to tracking smartly crafted pop gems. The long-running act of Joshua Epstein and Daniel Zott announced this week that they’re returning with their fourth full-length effort, the double-album “Invocations/Conversations,” out May 31 via LOVE IS EZ records (their new partnership with Secretly Distribution). Coming in hot from that 16-track behemoth is their newest single “Dumb Myself Down,” a ditty that derives its name from a conversation with former A&R rep Larry Waronker in which he lamented, “Man, sometimes I think you’re just a little too smart, trying to be a little too clever for what you’re trying to accomplish.”

So what’s a clever band to do? “I thought about it and started to try and write this really simple song — and it turned complicated, dammit!” Epstein says. “It was almost a joke. I wish I could do something that was just a vibe. I guess a lot of it is ego that makes you get in the way of your own simplicity and over-complicate things. I’m trying to work on that, and that song is just making fun of that.” Running at a hair over 4 minutes “Dumb Myself Down” is deceptively spastic and an immensely fun, bubbling production of vocalized plaints charging through a blizzard of audio snippets.

||| Stream: “Dumb Myself Down”

||| Also: Stream “NYC” and “Day In, Day Out”