AUSTIN - Jefrey Siler found himself in the refrigerated back of a yogurt truck, tucked away in the back streets of Sydney, Australia, his adopted home for over a decade. With depression in full swing, he crawled back to sleep because he wasn’t allowed in the house. Drinking wasn’t the vice, nor was cheating; music was the mistress and neglect the result. As both an escape & an excuse, music had been the crutch that kept him afloat during early years of depression and his parents's divorce, but had now become the catalyst in recreating a similar cycle in his own relationship.
So goes the backdrop for Jefinitely, the new album from Austin-based Jefrey Siler. Largely mixed & and produced by Yuuki Matthews of the Shins & Sufjan Stevens, Jefinitely features guest spots from friends & tourmates like Pedro The Lions’ David Bazan and Lenny Lynch of Farsi garage rockers Habibi (KRS) while being backed up by friends who are band members of Andrew Bird, Cass McCombs & Buck Meek (of Big Theif). And while it only took him two days in Brooklyn to record the album, Siler spent the better part of 5 years finding his way to write it.
Clawing his way out of the marital hole he had dug, Siler began both personal therapy and a type of couples therapy called Imago, which “held up a mirror to the patterns and coping mechanisms that had outlived their usefulness.” But just as that storm started to pass, Siler got a call from his mother saying her cancer had resurfaced. Two months later she died.
Emotionally flattened, they decided a sea change was in order and uprooted to Brooklyn. While en route to the airport, Siler got an email out of the blue from Silver Jew’s David Berman - ‘your album Yellow Means Infection! was one of the best I heard this year, thought you should know.’ The timing was serendipitous.
“Death can certainly complicate life, but it brings perspective as far as what really matters.” With this mindset, he entered into a different type of discipline; writing songs that, while often serious in nature, allowed room for levity. He even went to songwriting retreats, camping beneath the Colorado moon and working with songwriters like Steve Poltz and the Grammy nominated Mary Gauthier to, “pick his songs apart, sniffing out any insincerity.”
The result is a collection of songs that could have only have been written by Jefrey Siler. Upon hearing the new record author Derek Sivers quite aptly described Siler as “a Texan Lou Reed.” Jefinitely strikes a delicate balance of humorous, self-effacing critique and a desire foracceptance and objectivity, all things that sound good, but are uncomfortable up close.
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AUSTIN - Jefrey Siler found himself in the refrigerated back of a yogurt truck, tucked away in the back streets of Sydney, Australia, his adopted home for over a decade. With depression in full swing, he crawled back to sleep because he wasn’t allowed in the house. Drinking wasn’t the vice, nor was cheating; music was the mistress and neglect the result. As both an escape & an excuse, music had been the crutch that kept him afloat during early years of depression and his parents's divorce, but had now become the catalyst in recreating a similar cycle in his own relationship.
So goes the backdrop for Jefinitely, the new album from Austin-based Jefrey Siler. Largely mixed & and produced by Yuuki Matthews of the Shins & Sufjan Stevens, Jefinitely features guest spots from friends & tourmates like Pedro The Lions’ David Bazan and Lenny Lynch of Farsi garage rockers Habibi (KRS) while being backed up by friends who are band members of Andrew Bird, Cass McCombs & Buck Meek (of Big Theif). And while it only took him two days in Brooklyn to record the album, Siler spent the better part of 5 years finding his way to write it.
Clawing his way out of the marital hole he had dug, Siler began both personal therapy and a type of couples therapy called Imago, which “held up a mirror to the patterns and coping mechanisms that had outlived their usefulness.” But just as that storm started to pass, Siler got a call from his mother saying her cancer had resurfaced. Two months later she died.
Emotionally flattened, they decided a sea change was in order and uprooted to Brooklyn. While en route to the airport, Siler got an email out of the blue from Silver Jew’s David Berman - ‘your album Yellow Means Infection! was one of the best I heard this year, thought you should know.’ The timing was serendipitous.
“Death can certainly complicate life, but it brings perspective as far as what really matters.” With this mindset, he entered into a different type of discipline; writing songs that, while often serious in nature, allowed room for levity. He even went to songwriting retreats, camping beneath the Colorado moon and working with songwriters like Steve Poltz and the Grammy nominated Mary Gauthier to, “pick his songs apart, sniffing out any insincerity.”
The result is a collection of songs that could have only have been written by Jefrey Siler. Upon hearing the new record author Derek Sivers quite aptly described Siler as “a Texan Lou Reed.” Jefinitely strikes a delicate balance of humorous, self-effacing critique and a desire foracceptance and objectivity, all things that sound good, but are uncomfortable up close.
