Jack and Nataly Versus Everything

The loudest music tends to be the least interesting. More production, more image, more everything piled on until you can’t find the actual song underneath. Britney, Gaga, Cyrus—each doing their version of spectacle, and spectacle is fine in theory, I just notice when it’s covering for an absence.

Which is why I kept coming back to Pomplamoose. Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn, working out of California, posting videos on YouTube with living-room production values and the musical instincts of people who’ve actually listened to things. They cover Single Ladies, Nature Boy, and Mrs. Robinson, and what they do with each is quietly devastating—not deconstructive, not ironic, just stripped back to where you can hear what made the original worth loving. Their own songs hold up the same way.

Nataly has a voice that sounds like it’s being heard for the first time every time. The directness of it—she’s not performing the song, she’s just singing it, and the camera picks up everything. Jack makes me mildly uneasy in a way I haven’t fully diagnosed, something in the eyes, but his playing is undeniable and I expect unsettling dreams about him that I won’t want to analyze.

They’re already past the point of being a secret, view counts well into the millions on a platform where that means something. Artists working the adjacent territory—Regina Spektor, Anna Ternheim, Marit Larsen—should probably pay attention. Pomplamoose are coming for the same space with something that feels slightly more urgent. I’m buying the album regardless. Jack’s nightmare cameo is probably worth it.