Tobias Jesso Jr.
Goon

After sacrificing the ardor of his twenties chasing, in Los Angeles, a career as a ghostwriter and musician for pop singers, Tobias leaves disillusioned, heading back to his hometown of Vancouver. Returning to live with his parents, he discovers a piano at home and, approaching an instrument that was unfamiliar to him until then with naivety, begins to compose his first songs, in which he transfers the sentimental (and artistic) frustrations of his Los Angeles experience. In short, it's the classic story where music is the tool to exorcise life's adversities. And if you add a mother sick with cancer to this, you have a story seemingly perfectly packaged to create a character tailor-made for the media.

The first of these songs is "Just A Dream" (posted online in 2013), where he imagines being a father trying in vain to explain the world to his daughter. This is followed by "Without You" and "True Love," which help spread his name.

In 2014, interest around the young man continues to grow: his first concerts (including the Pitchfork Festival in Paris), a video for La Blogothèque, and the start of album recordings with renowned producers in the overseas alternative scene. If we were in Albion, all of this would be summed up with one word: HYPE.

Finally, in March 2015, the debut with "Goon". Contrary to expectations, the album is a pleasant surprise (or a confirmation for those who already knew him). Certainly not something particularly original, TJ makes his own the lessons of the (Anglophone) songwriting school between the sixties and seventies and brings it back in 2015 without major upheavals compared to the standards of the genre. The solo Lennon (in the already mentioned "Just A Dream"), but certainly also McCartney's counterpart ("Crocodile Tears"), the best of Elton John, scattered echoes of Bacharach, a touch of Todd Rundgren's "Something/Anything?," and at times the early Tom Waits.

An intimate singer-songwriter style that mainly relies on the piano-voice duo, supported by arrangements that never fall into the manneristic, even though in some instances they are less effective. Tobias Jesso, despite the sense of déjà vu, shows in his debut a great melodic gift and an undeniable talent for writing songs, which, even though in their more conventional and traditionally pop form, are genuine in their simplicity.