Ears Wide Open: PJ Western

Kevin Bronson on July 19th, 2022

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Artists who went off on a solo bender when the COVID-19 pandemic deprived them of working with their bandmates or usual collaborators have generally created music that falls into one of two orthodoxies: The world is a weird, sad place full of crippling isolation and fading hope; or, the world is a weird, kaleidoscopic place brimming with possibilities, benevolence and humor.

PJ Western came down on the optimistic side. The L.A.-based songwriter — whom you know as Joshua Epstein, one-half of the indie duo JR JR — loosed his imagination in writing his debut album, “Here I Go,” made with producer-engineer Gus Seyffert at Sargent Recorders. Seyffert tapped a host of prominent players, including Bedouine, Stewart Cole and Jake Blanton, to help bring the songs to life.

The album’s first two singles don’t merely have stick-with-ya melodies, but whimsical energy. The robots might not be taking over quite yet, but on “Human Machines,” Western suggests the time might be nigh: “You might be a sexual tourist, a posthuman purist, but you assure us / No one gets hurt in the virtual world, we all set our own preferences,” he quips.

And “Blah Blah Blah” is an exercise in relativism inspired by the deprivations of the pandemic. “The farther away from normalcy we got, we found ourselves longing for that which was previously considered mundane,” Western says. “‘Blah Blah Blah’ is about the desire to be bored at a party again. Not because we crave boredom, but because the privilege of being bored in an otherwise exciting setting is one we still hopefully deserve.”

The “Blah Blah Blah” video was directed by Serena Reynolds. PJ Western has two nights remaining of his free residency (see below) at the Silverlake Lounge, tonight (with funny people Fred Armisen, Ahmed Bharoocha and CC Coccoli as guests) and July 26.

“Here I Go” is out Sept. 16 via New West Records.

||| Stream: “Human Machines”