Love Story In Blood Red: Everything's Everywhere (2LP)

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Some lyrics belong solely to the person who wrote them. They're non-transferrable. They belong to that one writer and are theirs alone. So when Jason Frederick nonchalantly hits us with "love oughta feel like getting caught in a lie," in the opening to "Perfect", on Love Story In Blood Red (s/t debut), it's immediately clear we're not in for the standard highs and lows of love songs immemorial. Instead, he's giving us a kind of warning. As if to say, what's coming next may not be pretty, but it's certainly from the heart; something that is Jason's, and his alone.

Over the course of LSIBR's ouvre, Jason's songwriting feels continuously free from inhibition, as though the thought that someone might someday hear these songs barely occurred to him. The songs are about obsession, love, adoration, lust, devotion, kink, stubbornness, loss, and jealousy, among other things, but they don't necessarily carry any great universality. We don't need to see ourselves in them in order to inhabit them, and if we do wind up relating in some way it feels almost superfluous. There's so much of Jason in the songs that there's no need to see or feel for anything else.

LSIBR probably wouldn't have existed if not for a young Chicago-based filmmaker named Maria, Jason's girlfriend at the time and now wife of 20 years. Much of the first batch of songs exist solely for her. The fact that Jason let the rest of us hear them is probably only owing to the idea that making them public would heighten their impact on his true intended audience of one. They're the kind of songs that muses the world over wish had been written for them, but they're not mere vessels of longing or devotion. They travel from dirty and crass, to comic and playful, to frustrated and bewildered, and lots of other places in between, becoming all the more intimate each step of the way.

At the time, this turn toward writing songs for Maria marked an unexpected departure for Jason, who was known mostly in music circles as the frontman for the Spiveys and The Means, both blistering, amazing, super aggro bands, but not exactly purveyors of love songs. Everyone knew he could scream with the best of them, but we had yet to learn that he could croon too. Listening to LSIBR again, however, it's more clear now that the brashness and depravity of Jason's earlier bands also found its way into the often quieter, more pop world of LSIBR in subtle, yet very important ways, adding depth where other bands would've quickly bottomed out on hooks or charm alone. In other words, LSIBR had bite, and lots of it. And as time went on, the focus of Jason's writing expanded to include things outside his world with Maria, but the creative bar for the band could always be traced back to that first handful of songs.

LSIBR played their first show on April 5, 2004 at the Empty Bottle in Chicago, and their last show on May 3, 2008 at The Royal Oaks in Youngstown, Ohio. In between they released three cherished albums, as well as a handful of live recordings and singles. It would be unforgivable to focus solely on Jason, even though he was certainly LSIBR's creative leader. There were many contributors over the band's four year span, but the core group of Nick Meiers on bass, Jim Duffy on drums, Kris Poulin on guitar, and Casey Meehan on organ, was hugely responsible for bringing the songs to life. Each left their unique mark on LSIBR's distinctive feel and arrangements, and each knew just when to let loose and breathe a little fire. It should also be noted that in addition to his guitar work, Kris Poulin's mastery as producer of the three studio albums is as much a work of art as the songs or performances themselves.

Anything else I could say about Love Story In Blood Red would be better said by the songs themselves, so I'll leave it here.

To the uninitiated, welcome. You're in for a treat. - JKSome lyrics belong solely to the person who wrote them. They're non-transferrable. They belong to that one writer and are theirs alone. So when Jason Frederick nonchalantly hits us with "love oughta feel like getting caught in a lie," in the opening to "Perfect", on Love Story In Blood Red (s/t debut), it's immediately clear we're not in for the standard highs and lows of love songs immemorial. Instead, he's giving us a kind of warning. As if to say, what's coming next may not be pretty, but it's certainly from the heart; something that is Jason's, and his alone.

Over the course of LSIBR's ouvre, Jason's songwriting feels continuously free from inhibition, as though the thought that someone might someday hear these songs barely occurred to him. The songs are about obsession, love, adoration, lust, devotion, kink, stubbornness, loss, and jealousy, among other things, but they don't necessarily carry any great universality. We don't need to see ourselves in them in order to inhabit them, and if we do wind up relating in some way it feels almost superfluous. There's so much of Jason in the songs that there's no need to see or feel for anything else.

LSIBR probably wouldn't have existed if not for a young Chicago-based filmmaker named Maria, Jason's girlfriend at the time and now wife of 20 years. Much of the first batch of songs exist solely for her. The fact that Jason let the rest of us hear them is probably only owing to the idea that making them public would heighten their impact on his true intended audience of one. They're the kind of songs that muses the world over wish had been written for them, but they're not mere vessels of longing or devotion. They travel from dirty and crass, to comic and playful, to frustrated and bewildered, and lots of other places in between, becoming all the more intimate each step of the way.

At the time, this turn toward writing songs for Maria marked an unexpected departure for Jason, who was known mostly in music circles as the frontman for the Spiveys and The Means, both blistering, amazing, super aggro bands, but not exactly purveyors of love songs. Everyone knew he could scream with the best of them, but we had yet to learn that he could croon too. Listening to LSIBR again, however, it's more clear now that the brashness and depravity of Jason's earlier bands also found its way into the often quieter, more pop world of LSIBR in subtle, yet very important ways, adding depth where other bands would've quickly bottomed out on hooks or charm alone. In other words, LSIBR had bite, and lots of it. And as time went on, the focus of Jason's writing expanded to include things outside his world with Maria, but the creative bar for the band could always be traced back to that first handful of songs.

LSIBR played their first show on April 5, 2004 at the Empty Bottle in Chicago, and their last show on May 3, 2008 at The Royal Oaks in Youngstown, Ohio. In between they released three cherished albums, as well as a handful of live recordings and singles. It would be unforgivable to focus solely on Jason, even though he was certainly LSIBR's creative leader. There were many contributors over the band's four year span, but the core group of Nick Meiers on bass, Jim Duffy on drums, Kris Poulin on guitar, and Casey Meehan on organ, was hugely responsible for bringing the songs to life. Each left their unique mark on LSIBR's distinctive feel and arrangements, and each knew just when to let loose and breathe a little fire. It should also be noted that in addition to his guitar work, Kris Poulin's mastery as producer of the three studio albums is as much a work of art as the songs or performances themselves.

Anything else I could say about Love Story In Blood Red would be better said by the songs themselves, so I'll leave it here. To the uninitiated, welcome. You're in for a treat. - Joachim Kearns