Spend a Day at Mystery Beach With the Jazz June’s ‘After the Earthquake’ Video (First Look)

by Ken Partridge

A lot has changed since we last heard from the Jazz June.more

When the band split up in 2004, emo was on the wane, and few could have predicted that the Pennsylvania foursome and groups of its ilk—among them Braid and American Football—would receive a kind of popular and critical revaluation and reunite a decade later to great acclaim. But that's exactly what's happened.

The Jazz June are at the forefront of this so-called emo revival, though their excellent new album, After the Earthquake, is hardly a rehashing of the past. Sonically, it's smart and sensitive indie-dude power-pop—a sound closer to, say, Nada Surf than it is to the experimentalism of 2002's would-be swan song Better Off Without Air—and frontman Andrew Low's lyrics deal with moving on, for better or worse.

That's the theme of the title track, the video for which we're pleased to premiere. It features a Mad Men-esque couple out for a picnic at the beach, and while things initially seem peachy keen, the mood soon turns dark, and this pair of lookers must come to grips with problems they can't ignore, one of which may be the fact they're dead. Depends on how you read it.

"'After the Earthquake' is a about getting on with life after a major life-changing event or a new phase of life, and how it can feel like you are living in a new surreal existence," Low tells NYLON Guys. "The members of The Jazz June have been through a lot together in the past 20 years since we started the band, and we had the chance to remember the great and not so great times during the recording of the album. This is reflected in the lyrics of the song, and it is the general concept of the album.”