This one took a while, dang. I had planned in my notes that Jesse would take me about a week, and instead he took me more than three. That is because I made that plan having only looked into the stuff the he put out under the Jesse Welles name. Once I started listening and actually started gathering everything together and planning things out day by day, I found the albums he’d released under the Welles name, and as frontman for Dead Indian, and even before that under the Jeh-sea Wells name. It added up, and I’m counting all of that stuff in this post.
I’ve tried to be thorough and listen to everything he’s put out—to whatever degree I’ve succeeded, I have whoever runs the @WellsArchive channel on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@WellesArchive) to thank. Seriously, you are a lifesaver and my hero. To whatever degree I’ve failed, it’s a mix of my own laziness and the difficulties of finding things that have been taken down from the internet to protect corporate ownership of media.
Still, I think I did alright.
It definitely made listening through all of Jesse’s stuff a bit of an adventure, with pretty distinct phases, different parts of his musical career that really stand out from each other. Under his now fairly well known Jesse Welles name, he’s made lots of folk in varying flavors. Sometimes more folk-rock, sometimes more americana, sometimes more satire. Under the Welles and Jeh-sea Wells names, his work was much more grunge-rock. I think in every phase he tried, I found stuff I liked a lot, and stuff that I thought just didn’t work as well, despite how much I was rooting for it to.
I really was rooting for it, too. By my sixth day of listening, I’d decided that I liked his vibe, that I was a fan. My listening order was kinda skiddlywompus (Dead Indian, then Red Trees and White Trashes, then Jesse Welles, then Jeh-sea Wells, then the rest of Welles (Arkancide, Alien Secrets, and the like)) so that sixth day of listening was Middle. That remains my favorite of Jesse’s albums by a fair bit. Red Trees and White Trashes started to win me over, then Hells Welles was too mellow for me by half, and then Middle just hit. It convinced me of Jesse’s skill as an artist and a poet, convinced me to listen to everything else from him with a keener ear. Honestly, if not for that, I might not have roused myself to the effort of listening to all the Jeh-sea Wells stuff at all.
But I did! I’m glad I did, too, even though I didn’t really love any of it and I don’t think I’m likely to go back and listen to it much more in the future. It’s still decent, and I appreciate it as a part of his history and his context, but I don’t think it’s essential. Yeah, essential is a good word for it. I think listening to it was endearing, I think it endeared me to Jesse, but I don’t think it was essential to experiencing him or his music or his feeling. There was some stuff that was great; there was some stuff that was eh.
I think that’s generally true of how I feel of Jesse. He’s put out a ton of stuff. A lot of it is genuinely awesome and I love it lots. It speaks to my heart; it makes me feel, just a little bit, like loneliness or bitterness shared is loneliness or bitterness lessened (halved is too strong, sorry). A lot of it is just… more stuff. Kinda a slog. That’s where the A- fits, I think. It’s my compromise. Because on the one hand, I feel quite strongly that I like him, that I’m a fan of him, that he’s interesting and cool and worth looking at closely—I feel that strong enough for a full A. On the other hand, when I break it down into parts, there’s a whole lot that is kinda just there.
In some ways, I wish that there weren’t enough plainly enjoyable music in his catalogue, or that there were more music that I actively disliked. I feel that the degree to which I like him and think he’s cool gets lost as a low A-, where it would be emphasized as a C+. Does that make sense? I almost think he’s too good for the A-, because in lots of ways I value my C+s more. Or, I value them differently (and in a way that sometimes I do think is kinda more), and he fits that kind of value more closely. But he meets the A- bar for plain enjoyment, for me being willing to say I’m a fan, and I think it’d be odd to take that away from him. So, A- it is. Just a strange dissonance I have with the way I’ve organized things, I suppose.
Jesse Welles complete, now listening to: RAYE
