Jupiter In Velvet just dropped a new LP, called Beautiful New Day, his seventh album.
Prior to splitting for the U.K. in 2011, Jupiter In Velvet was hanging his hat in L.A., playing with bands like Big Mic & The Metallic Marauders, Zuzu’s Petals, Woolton Parrish, and 2Morrow EvR AfteR. While in the U.K, he reinvented himself, blending elements of alt-pop, psych rock, electro-dance, and alt-punk into a unique sound.
Jupiter began playing the drums when he was nine-years-old. By the age of 10, he was in a band. Later, in his teens, he taught himself guitar, keyboards, and took up singing and songwriting. Then he took a break, focusing on gymnastics, followed by taking degrees in marketing and psychology, and then a post-grad degree in finance. He was working on his Ph.D. in finance, when he decided to bail on becoming a Master of the Universe and pursued his love of music.
The new album mirrors Jupiter In Velvet’s emotional and health ordeals, encompassing feelings from rage and despair to the hope of a beautiful new day.
Speaking the the themes of the album, Jupiter says, “It conveys the way I truly feel about the difficult circumstances life brings us. That it’s often in our darkest moments when we see the greatest potential for hope in our lives.”
Comprising 11-tracks, the best song on the album include “Can’t Get It Right,” featuring dirty guitars and a wall of sound sensibility, as well as wickedly inflected vocals. “Monsters” opens with rolling guitars riding a prog-rock feel. Sparkling keyboards travel underneath Jupiter’s deliciously soaring, snarling tones infusing the tune with dark eerie qualities.
“Metanoia” features new wave colors atop alt-rock punch, along with opaque guitars that take on heavy, dark grinding surfaces on the chorus. An ultra-dirty, ultra-tight guitar solo smolders with incandescent pigments. “The Day I Fell From The Stars” rides a stuttering industrial sci-fi feel full of oscillating colors and a Bowie-esque sensibility. This might be my favorite tune on the album because of its hefty resonance and Jupiter’s skintight tones.
“Kiss The Flame” opens with dirty guitar riffs backed by psych-rock tones, followed by a rolling snare seguing to a Jimi Hendrix-flavored psychedelic flux. After that, the tune explodes into muscularly gleaming guitars and kaleidoscopic hues.
Beautiful New Day is excellent, innovative, stylish, and beefy alt-rock. Jupiter In Velvet holds the whole thing together with his superb sinewy voice.