Album Review: Jagwar Ma - Howlin

Sydney-based electronic pop duo Jagwar Ma have a properly impressive production tour de force on their hands with the debut album, Howlin.

Electronic albums run the risk of stuttering the same beat over and over but Howlin thrives on variety. With unexpected vocal lines and minor harmonies alongside beats and synth lines, the record evokes at one moment a bustling back road in India and the next a hazy hipster bedroom party across the street.   

The second track, Uncertainty, is an album highlight with a gentle melody and the ridiculously endearing, repeated refrain, “how can you look so gloomy/when you're gloomy, howlin' looks so good to me”.

That Lonliness is a layered mosaic of sound with a grooved-up electric guitar line that you almost have to search for within the surrounding sounds, while debut single, Come Save Me, is one of the most conventional tracks on the LP with an almost catchy vocal line and soul clap, and the hand drum percussion on Exercise is worth a special mention.

Jono Ma and Gabriel Winterfield, who isolated themselves in France to record the album, have stumbled across a perfect little formula where the last few seconds of their tracks take on a completely new and refreshing beat and style and though small, the technique completely lifts the whole album; see opening track, What Love.

Closing track, Did You Have To, is a hauntingly resonant R&B ballad with stuttering post-production and the best vocal chorus line of the album, a sweeping ascending moment of phrasing, full of emotion. 

Compact at ten tracks total, this record is like a pocketbook companion for your ears. Howlin is an ethereal and experimental project that accomplishes an almost psychedelic throw rug effect over a genuinely inspired dream-pop base.