I got drunk one night in my early 20’s. I mean, I suppose that almost goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway because this one night stands out as somehow emblematic of, and unique from, all the others. I can’t really say why. It started in a bar with friends and ended—when? so many hours later?—in the back room of a store—selling what? I have no idea. I was surrounded by boxes, surrounded by cleaning supplies, surrounded by strangers. And those strangers were playing music. Crazy fucking beautiful music. I don’t know how I got there, and I don’t know what happened to anyone else who was there that night. I couldn’t give you one name or quote one lyric. I couldn’t point to the place on a map. And yet…somehow, in my mind and in the strangest yet purest way, that night represents my youth. 

We all have those nights—those ones that stand out, not for what they were, but for what they signified: a moment when we sensed that we were where we were supposed to be. When we came to believe that, despite all signs to the contrary, New York might open to us like a palm. When we felt we were truly ourselves, even if we didn’t yet know who that was. 

It’s those moments that Jamison Wake conjures. I mean that literally and figuratively. On a warm night this spring, behind an unmarked, warehouse door somewhere deep in Brooklyn, Wake gathered a small group around a banquet table laden with food and libations to play his debut album, BINDS. No, “play” is not the word. “Immerse us in” is more like it. He got us buzzed. He dropped the lights. He told us to close our eyes if we wanted, to breathe it all in, asking that we pay attention in a era when we’ve practically forgotten how.

For the next thirty minutes, and punctuated by funky impressionistic video and moments when a tall, handsome man, lit by the glow of an iPhone read snippets of prose—telling of a love story gone wrong (or right? or both?)—Wake played his album. And what an album it is: 80’s new wave mixed with Kanye mixed with a heaping dose of hopeless romanticism, BINDS revels in its beautiful, seething melancholy. It tells a love story too, yes, but one that couldn’t be further from the bubblegum pop of Top 40s, one that throbs with longing and infatuation and then spins out into something harsher, truer, darker, deeper, something that captures the pain and beauty of spending decades lying next to a body you may never truly know. Set to heavy, hypnotic synthesizers and beats that you feel in your solar plexus, the music makes you feel. It demands that you feel. 

And feel I did, sitting there with my eyes closed, my hands clutching a plastic cup of cold champagne, my face streaked with glitter that someone had haphazardly applied, and my eyes wet with tears. The earnestness could have derailed the whole thing, but it didn’t—there was too much talent here, too much truth-telling. It was like someone was singing what you didn’t even realize you’d been thinking (and yes, feeling) all along.

At least, that’s how it felt to me. So I’ll add that night to the list. The short list of the ones I’ll remember.

–Alex Morris