Geneva Jacuzzi hails from the same lo-fi glamorous weirdness scene that birthed Ariel Pink and Nite Jewel, and she falls approximately square in between those artists: the bedroom disco chanteuse styling of Nite Jewel crossed with the rinky-dink keyboards and bizarro persona of Ariel Pink is a pretty close description of Geneva Jacuzzi's sound. Given Ariel Pink's skyrocketing popularity over the last year (and the tendency of sites like Pitchfork to find ways to unnecessarily drop his name at every opportunity... their recent description of Gary Wilson as a "proto-Ariel Pink" is just one of many examples), I'm pretty wary of any new artist that is seemingly hitching their cart to his success. Geneva Jacuzzi has been cranking out her lo-fi jams for years however, and her recent full-length "Lamaze" on Vinyl International collects songs from 2004-2009, well before popular acclaim caught up to the music Ariel Pink was inspiring. So despite the fact that this sounds a lot like Ariel Pink, and he mastered and guests on the album, at least she started doing this before it was cool to do so. Another point in her favor is that, despite the fashion and self-indulgence (which honestly I take as a given for any artist coming out of LA), Geneva Jacuzzi seems like a huge dork. The appeal of the lo-fi pop sound to me is that it seems more sincere and honest, due to its indifference (or perhaps inability) to replicate the gloss and sheen of the fake, vapid music it emulates. With the numerable glamor shots, costumes, and multiple videos, Geneva Jacuzzi seems like she is attempting to position herself as a diva, but the oddness of the music and overall low-budget aesthetic points to a more legitimate artistic statement than a simple attempt at pop success. Check out some of her other videos:
Bad Moods (Rough Edit) featuring Ariel Pink
Love Caboose
