Jensen, Jeffrey Joe

Jensen, Jeffrey Joe

New! Coke New! Coke

Goner

New! Coke New! Coke is Jeffrey Joe Jensen trying to figure out where he came from, where he belongs, and why the hell the world is the way it is. He doesn't have the answers, but he has some pretty good songs.Jensen didn’t set out to make a concept album. He simply wanted to write honestly about his life, particularly the years since he left the United States in 2013. Somewhere along the way, New! Coke New! Coke became a record about dislocation, survival, love, faith, wonder, and his increasingly complicated relationship with America.Recorded across seven studios in Brooklyn and Philmont, New York; Longmeadow, Massachusetts; Nairobi, Kenya; Cairo, Egypt; and Galloway, New Jersey, New! Coke New! Coke is as geographically scattered as the musicians who made it. The album grew out of a collaboration with Michael Fellows, best known as a member of the influential D.C. punk band Rites of Spring, who recorded much of the album at his home studio in Philmont. Other sessions took place in Nairobi with Kenyan musicians from the Luo community, while a brief but mesmerizing cameo from Alvarius B., aka Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls, was recorded in Cairo. The far-flung cast reflects Jensen's decade abroad and his changing relationship with America, while the record itself refuses to separate music from the world around it.Jensen is hardly new to creative mischief. His previous exploits include the cult pseudo-documentary The Low-Down Dirty DAWGS, prank-phone duo Earles & Jensen, and the pop duo The Special...