Jimmy Montague’s Tomorrow’s Coffee is a Blanket of Cool, Kinetic Pop-Rock

Last year, NYC quartet Taking Meds dropped an album called Dial M For Meds and it was a standout measure of primitive, hook-heavy guitar-rock. Tracks like “Life Support” and “Outside” and “Wading Out” were real gorgeous, rewarding and clean mini-celebrations of a four-piece really in-tune with each other. Cut to now, and bassist James Palko has returned to his solo project, Jimmy Montague, for a third go-around. Previous Montague efforts, like Casual Use and The Light of the Afternoon, were standard fits of alt-rock paired with occasional horns and, while those records were good—as they flirted with pop-soul ever-so-briefly—it was only a matter of time before Palko’s alter-ego would finally take the shape he’s so distinctly teased out for five years.

This is where we meet Tomorrow’s Coffee, a blanket of cool that takes Billy Joel progenies and marries them with jazz fusion, yacht rock, power-pop and bedroom lo-fi in really bountiful ways. Jimmy Montague is a project that occupies the same canon as Mo Troper and Diners—artists who’ve aced the catchiness test and, at the end of the day, are the Elephant 6 Collective’s brightest modern-day disciples. Palko, like Troper and like Blue Broderick, can write the hell out of a pop song, and Tomorrow’s Coffee is relentless in its own pursuit of stringing together 10 sticky tracks of the like. Good luck finding a crack in this album.

The festivities kick off with “Tell You That You’re Right” and its Nick Lowe-style, organ-licked opening melody that explodes into a solo breakdown that puts the focus on rhythm and plenty of it. A bassline throbs deliciously, the percussion lends itself to a starring snare and then, beautifully, sensual horns. An echo chamber of vocal harmonies from Jess Hall—not unlike something Lesley Miller, Valerie Simpson and Patti Austin might have sung on Gaucho—envelopes around Palko’s own singing. Doing such a trick lets Palko never over-sing, instead coalescing with the vibe and chugging forward as its chilled-out conductor. As far as opening tracks go, “Tell You That You’re Right” is saccharine, animated and smoldering.

“No New Starts (For Broken Hearts)” has a certain jingle to it that is the antithesis to anthemic projection, as Palko muses on goodbyes and fresh beginnings. “Was writing all my fond farewells to ones I used to kiss and tell,” he sings, “on postcards from the corner store when, if only for a moment, had a thoughtful observation that the other side of the line’s been cut.” The song is sublime, euphoric in its own attempts to collage rockabilly and Broadway whimsy—and the “shoo-bop” melody breakdown near the track’s conclusion will make you feel like you’re one of those crooners singing next to a burning trash can in Rocky. “The Smoke After the Kill” sounds like a cigarette after a meal tastes, adopting right-of-the-dial, ageless and liquid rhythms paired with warm harmonies that sound like mid-century session begats and fine-tuned, peculiar pop re-awakenings. It’s the little things that plug Tomorrow’s Coffee with such grace: tropical guitar strums; featherlight percussion pressure points; Palko’s singing, which sounds like it’s coming from inside a white blazer chest pocket.