To be delicate and formidable at the same time takes a lot more than skill – one could even argue that it is a rare talent cultivated only through a personal love of music that is well above the status quo in pop music today. Kjersti Long is one of these special players who can do as much with her voice, and it’s been attracting a lot of attention this autumn thanks to the release of her new single “Boys in Jersey,” which is getting points largely on the strength of its signature crooning and uncompromising beat.
The melody that supports our singer in this track is sweet and supple, which is a far cry from the minimalistic dryness that has been purveying a lot of quality indie pop for the better part of the last year. I don’t get the impression from Long that she wants to follow the trend in “Boys in Jersey,” but instead find ways to be straightforward that doesn’t involve bleaching her core sound. The latter has been quite common in pop lately, to such an extent that a work like this single is all the more noticeable for those of us who follow the genre closely.
This is a rather blunt groove, but for Long’s purposes, I think it was the only option she could go with here. There’s not a lot of fat on the bassline in this single, which means that the percussion is responsible for carrying the groove on its own. This artist benefits from the black-and-white structuring of the beat mostly because of how well it allows for her to control the tempo, which is something a lot of her contemporaries simply do not dare to try for themselves (especially in original material).
I didn’t know what was ahead of me when I sat down with this single and its music video for the first time just the other day, but I can say now that I’m very impressed with what Kjersti Long is bringing into the studio in 2022, and I think she’s only going to get better as time goes on. There’s something rather fetching about a player that wants to be efficient but rejects minimalism’s most dire refinements – almost all of which have been getting a second wind on the back of modern indie-rockers. The future for this sound is real, and I’m hardly the only one saying so.