Jens Kuross – Crooked Songs LP

Back in December of 2023, after being on the road for a month opening for Devendra Banhart, I played a solo show in the basement of a Shriner lodge in Boise, Idaho. I’d never heard of Jens Kuross, a local act selected by the promoter to open the show. Before the show, we went to dinner together and he told me, “I’m just gonna play my Wurlitzer and sing with some ambient synth stuff and see what happens”

An hour later, with everyone sitting on that basement floor, Jens began to play. In the first twenty seconds, my wife and I looked at each other like, “Are you hearing what I’m hearing?” Jens played these beautiful, touching songs that sounded something like Arthur Russell-meets-Harry Nilsson. By the second song, I was in tears. It was the first live performance that ever made me cry. At the end of his set, I told my wife that it was the single best live performance I had ever seen.

It turned out that Jens had moved back to Idaho from LA after souring on the LA music scene, believing after so many years that his music was never going to find an audience there. After the move, both his management and booking agents dropped him assuming his career was basically finished. I listened to his previous albums. They didn’t sound anything like what I’d heard that night. His older songs were more polished, and the pristine production missed the weight and sincerity I’d heard during this stripped back live performance.

A few days later, I reached out to him over the phone and said, “Hear me out. I think you need to record an album that sounds exactly like what you played the other night. Just minimal and ambient. Like Arthur Russell’s World of Echo.” I was honestly surprised when he agreed. A few weeks later, I started to get recordings from him that sounded nearly identical to the show. I said, “Man, this is it. This is the exact sound”

In a way, I think Jens being dismissed by the music industry for so long is exactly what he needed to make this record. This feels like the sound of someone making music for themselves for the first time. The last song on the record ends with what is, to me, the mission statement of the album. “Today I feel like singing, to stop this world from changing me.”

I genuinely believe this album represents the music Jens was always meant to create. There’s something incredibly heavy, beautiful, touching, and magical about these crooked songs. I hope you hear that in them, too. I think this album will find people at the exact time they need to hear it. It certainly was that way for me. Jens Kuross has tapped into something people need to hear.”