Novak, Jeffrey

Novak, Jeffrey

Blood Celebration

Official Memorabilia

***"Surfacing with little early warning, the new album from Jeffrey Novak heralds a return to the solo psych boogie that broke him out of Cheap Time’s punk sweat n’ swagger. The last few years have seen Novak splitting his time between the glam crunch of Savoy Motel and the funk formations of his new band, Cookie Jar. It’s been more than a decade since he was solo above the marquee, but Blood Celebration feels like a natural next step. The album was born out of a break from Cookie Jar’s electric itch, with Novak looking to bring to life an acoustic-based boogie with an ear towards Hot Tuna. The resulting album grabs hold of the stitching that holds together his various personas and passions—a soul-soaked strummer that’s built to get yer blood pumping but that doesn’t forgo any of the pop trimmings either. The acoustic guitar remains the focal point here, but if you think this is Novak gone folk, get the notion far from your mind. Rolling its instincts through the Bolan-boogie and burnt end blues that fueled prime period Ty Segall and running wild through the American canon, the record picks at Petty and Spence and dips into the stewed songwriting that turned Nashville into a nexus of country, soul, R&B and rock. A few times a specter of spaced Brit-pop pops into the mix as well, with opener 'Lucyville' and 'Jaybird' nipping at territory traced by The Charlatans and The Telescopes. While the last few years have...

Novak, Jeffrey

Baron In The Trees

In The Red

In The Red is proud to announce the second solo album from Cheap Time front man Jeffrey Novak. This album was on the shelves for several years where it aged like a fine wine, and the results are the audio equivalent of an excellent Amontillado. Novak is the rock underworld’s most adept chameleon. Take one look at the Tennessee man’s band history and you’ll see a series of quick genre switches. There was the one-man garage band record under his given name back in 2005, the classic ’77 trash-punk of Rat Traps, and his current, most well-received project, the weirdo pop punk power trio Cheap Time. Between touring and recording with that band, Novak returned to the world of solo records.  His debut solo album, the self-released After the Ball, stroked all the remaining ’60s and ’70s rock fantasies he’d yet to tackle in his oeuvre. Baron in the Trees carries on in much the same tradition with Novak’s anglophilia on full display here—flashes on Syd Barrett, Ray Davies, Kevin Ayers, David Bowie and Sparks. There’s a fine line between homage and imitation and Novak straddles it with near-perfection; most importantly, he doesn’t look back and he writes in a quick enough manner to keep the naysayers eating dust. Composed and recorded on piano with sparse bass, guitar, drums and strings at Jay Reatard’s Shattered Studios, Baron in the Trees also marks one of the last projects that Reatard participated in, having recorded, produced and played on the album. Much like Reatard’s...