CAT#: ULY043
ARTIST: Jack Alboher
TITLE: Cornbliss Highway
DATE: 11/11/2025
FORMAT: Cassette
PRICE: $15

Okay, this is going to sound like a tall tale for marketing purposes but my darling Ulyssos, I assure you it’s Gord’s Honestest Truth. About a year ago or so, we were at UHQ riffing about Toejazz versions of popular artists. “What is the Toejazz Paul Simon?” “What would The Smiths as Toejazz sound like?” Etc etc. This is sadly the kind of nerd-ass shit a certain kind of art-label person talks about to try and fill the bottomless void of their existence. “I want to find the Toejazz Jeff Buckley” one of us exclaimed. We scratched our chinnychinchins at the thought of such a sound. Hmm…

And sure enough, couple weeks later, we shit you not, a young person named Jack Alboher appears in our DMs. He’s from that Vermont/Western Mass area that might actually be the most interesting music scene in the United States of America. He sent some WIP pieces for a project he called Cornbliss Highway. And as we worked our way through the demos, we couldn’t help but think a cosmic prank was being played — “Holy macaroni, this is the Toejazz Jeff Buckley! He’s found us!”

But let’s get this straight cornpop, Jack is pulling from much more here. All down this Cornbliss Highway we also get whizzing whiffs of Prefab Sprout, Durutti Column, The Railway Children, “Out of the Cradle”-era Lindsey Buckingham and even underground toejazz legend Elex Everett. Yes, each of those brought to mind in surprising and sometimes profound ways. Scintillating acoustic guitar quick-picked maddening patterns so goddamn clear they sound synthetic. Americanical Primitive. Almost always on a bed of programmed clickity-clack drum patternizations and matrixes. Heart-on-sleeve and delirious. But always with a hint of self-deprecation and a sense of humor that that old self-serious boho Jeff Buckley could never. Live laff laff puff puff pass jumping Jack Alboher is a gas gas gas. All gas and no 808s & Heartbreaks. Are you ready to be heartbroken? Every flavor of Jolly Rancher fizzing at the bottom of a vintage Zima bottle, kept on ice for 25 years and popped just for this auspicious occasion. Cheers. Lyric of the wholeass year: “Fuck the serenity prayer.”