Gadzooks Vol. 1

Caleb Landry Jones is a continual creator. The Texan-born star found fame as an actor – you’ll recognise him from key roles in X-Men: First Class, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, amongst others – but music is perhaps his first love, and his source of greatest comfort. A chance encounter with famed auteur Jim Jarmusch brought him into the orbit of Sacred Bones, and the stalwart independent released Caleb’s 2020 debut album The Mother Stone. Psychedelic in a defiantly non-retro way, this indulgent, freewheeling trip won critical acclaim, but masked a secret – he’d already finished another album. Linking with the same cast who formed The Mother Stone, he resumed his partnership with producer Nic Jodoin, based out of the elegant Valentine Recording Studio in Los Angeles. A studio steeped in history – everyone from Bing Crosby to Frank Zappa worked there – he interrupted mixing sessions for his own debut album in order to focus on something different. Gadzooks Vol. 1 is unlike anything you’ve heard before – comparisons range from Skip Spence’s fractured masterpiece Oar through to skewed troubadour Robyn Hitchcock, via John Lennon’s black moods on The White Album and Frank Zappa’s caustic surrealism.