This year I have reconciled with Pitchfork, since many of the albums from the underground that they have reviewed positively or rated with “Best New Music”, although at first they raised doubts in me, I have ended up loving them. Some of those albums, fortunately, we have been able to dedicate space to in JENESAISPOP, such as those by Carolina or Nick León, both included in the 2025 Yearbook. Others, such as Marie Somerville’s, have unfortunately been left in the pipeline (perhaps we will recover it in the future). And yes, although it has not appeared on Pitchfork, may Rocío Márquez forgive us.
Another of those LPs that, due to A or B, we have not been able to analyze carefully during the year has been ‘Friend’, the third album by James K. ‘Friend’ is the album that promises to put the New York singer and producer Jamie Krasner on the map, probably for a long time.
‘Friend’ is an album that recovers the downtempo music of the nineties, in patient and extensive songs that escape the dictatorship of the algorithm. With nods also to drum n’ bass, dream-pop, trip-hop, chill-out or even shoegaze, the songs on ‘Friend’ climb several steps of immediacy in James K’s catalog and, above all, propose spectacular attention to detail in the production, very evident in the main cut, ‘Days Go By’.
‘Days Go By’ is one of those songs that balance emotional depth and sonic craftsmanship. A meditation on impermanence and the importance of holding on to human connections as time passes, ‘Days Go By’ is a beautiful production that approaches downtempo from the avant-garde, combining ethereal atmospheres, delicate percussion and electronic flourishes to build a kind of magic carpet that flies towards a dream world. If you thought that no one wrote these types of songs anymore, you were wrong.
Supported by a beautiful vocal melody, ‘Days Go By’ is a reflection on the inevitable passage of time, written in an impressionistic style, which even accepts death with resignation (“when we die, we don’t know”). The chorus “hold on, on to it” suggests that love is the only thing keeping James K grounded in the midst of uncertainty.
