For many years, the Canadian producer Jamison Isaak has specialized in a zoned-out, nostalgic form of dance music. That’s changing. Today, there’s a new Teen Daze single that has nothing to do with dance music. Instead, Isaak is going for lush, slinky ’80s-style studio-pop, and he has help.
Indie-pop expert Andy Shauf, who released his album Norm last year, plays drums on the new Teen Daze single “Back yard.” Sam Wilkes, the LA jazz musician who just released an LP called The Doober with frequent collaborator Sam Gendel, plays bass. Here’s what Jamison Isaak says about it:
This was the first song I wrote for this record almost four years ago. It was early in the pandemic, and I had just bought a new vocal mic from a friend of mine. I hadn’t written any songs with vocals in a few years, and when my friend offered to sell me this mic, I thought it might spark some inspiration. Subconsciously, I think I was looking for an outlet to talk about everything that I was feeling at the time. It started me on a four-year journey, resulting in this song.
This song is about my life at that specific window in time and how it felt to be processing life during the beginning of the pandemic, but also life as a new father, as someone closely approaching 40, a new homeowner, and a husband of almost 10 years. The act of “staring into the backyard” was a very literal thing that I found myself doing; my studio faces into our small stretch of backyard, and I’d find myself spacing out as I stared through the window, considering how so much had changed in my life. I remember thinking that the lyric, “What I wouldn’t do to do it all again,” would be misinterpreted, as though I was saying, “I wish I could redo everything,” which isn’t the case. I found myself feeling so content, so grateful to be in this state of domestic bliss, that if I had the chance to go back and change something, I wouldn’t!
When it comes to Music About Domestic Life, of course the main inspiration for this tune had to be Paul McCartney. The guitar solo feels like it’s right out of Paul’s playbook. Andy’s drums and Sam’s bass part somehow make it feel like we were all in the same room when this was made, which is a testament to both their playing
Daniel Sparrow directed the “Back yard” video, which finds Jamison Isaak playing a bunch of instruments and looking like an undercover cop in an ’80s movie. Watch it below.
