The Snowflakes That Hit Us Became Our Stars - Seven Saturdays

The Snowflakes That Hit Us Became Our Stars

Seven Saturdays
Independent/Bandcamp.

SCQ Rating: 74%

Hot on the heels of his self-titled EP that came out in January, Jonathan D. Haskell returns with a second mini-album of all new material that may instigate a concentrated bout of déjà vu for the first few minutes. Namely, opener ‘Early Morning Fog Bank’ is behind that familiar feeling, dousing the listener in pre-dawn downtown ambience and audio clips of feminine, French dialogue. Hypnotic though it may be, the track is punch-for-punch identical to the trajectory of Seven Saturdays' ‘The Shallow End’, only slightly longer. It’s a strangely assured move for Haskell, someone with such a vulnerably thin catalog, to self-reference himself so thoroughly but the way both openers lead into their second cuts offers an interesting contrast.

Unlike his earlier EP’s dive into pseudo-Album Leaf territory, ‘Early Morning Fog Bank’ clears up into the awe-inspiring ‘Au Revoir’, a pristine chill-out groove flurried over by strings and a choral. Throw in the intimacy of a toy-box bridge and all-too-brief vocoder-effected vocals - so subdued they’re hardly noticeable - and Seven Saturdays has officially broken new ground. Not the kind of “new ground” that wouldn’t sound terribly out of place on a cinematic car commercial but the kind of posh-electronic hybrid that would freeze you from changing the channel each time it came on.

The remaining five tracks follow ‘Au Revoir’’s lead, showcasing a finessed take on Seven Saturdays' orchestrated sullenness. Haskell’s brief 'Piano Interlude I' and 'II', although executed as stream-of-conscious mood-setters, sweat classically-inclined precision and switch up from the safer padded-keyboard approach of ‘True Romance’. As this nearly ten-minute dream-athon acknowledges, Haskell’s evolving songcraft and detail for arrangements does sacrifice that occasional punch his debut EP offered. Thanks to Haskell’s title track, Seven Saturdays anchors the EP with a percussion-oriented instrumental that prevents The Snowflakes That Hit Us Became Our Stars from getting lost in the shadows. Choosing intricate arrangements over the former EP’s forceful dynamics, The Snowflakes That Hit Us Became Our Stars offers a secondary angle at this convincing songwriter.

Seven Saturdays - Seven Saturdays

Seven Saturdays

Seven Saturdays
Self-released.

SCQ Rating: 75%

With a name like Seven Saturdays, one might peg Jonathan D. Haskell’s project as a triumphant ode to excess that muses weeklong binges running Sunday through Sunday, or a chronological soundtrack to seven consecutive weekends. While either could be a possible root of origin for this Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist’s moniker, I can assure you Haskell’s debut EP sounds prepped for neither extroverted clubs nor raging house-parties. Instead, we’re ushered into the twilight hues and nocturnal tones of ‘The Shallow End’, a track as dark and comforting as the backseat of a taxicab once you’ve stumbled free of the dancehall’s dry-ice and sweat-covered crowds. Over the course of thirty minutes, Seven Saturdays doesn’t deal with weekend throw-downs so much as escaping their chaos for quiet reflection.

Delivering on that opener’s foreboding promise, ‘Secret Things’, in its rise from pedestrian live-drums to swooning orchestration, reveals Haskell’s top-form trademarks as that of a pop-conductor. Communicating a distinctly urban air drawn from his inescapable home of Los Angeles, Seven Saturdays pivots between late-night, lonely traffic lights (on the palpably transient ‘Love In the Time of Anticipated Defeat’) and string-laden daydreams (‘Good Morning, I Love You’), assured in their overt romanticism but grandiose in the scope of one’s wistful imagination. That combination of melodic drones and symphonic pop, respectively, gels together fluently, establishing a rock-solid emotional range while trading low-end meditations for sky-bound anthems. No track accomplishes the latter better than ‘A Beautiful Day’, the closing track which overrules Haskell’s quieter output and decides Seven Saturdays’ M.O. for surging, harmonious scores caught somewhere between live-instrument electronica and post-rock.

His basic set-up of keys, violin and drums may seem redolent of another electronic-fringe artist who resides just up the coast, Jimmy Lavalle of the Album Leaf, and the comparisons are fruitful for both artists. Yet while Lavalle has mellowed his output into increasingly digestible mood-music tablets, Jonathan D. Haskell imbues a restlessness throughout Seven Saturdays, beatific yet hungry, which over five tracks allows for a convincing display of well-planned impulsiveness. An impressive independent release worth checking out and a first-step I’m eager to see followed up on.