5 Overlooked NYC Albums in the Mid-Year Sweep
Juan Wauters – N.A.P. North American Poetry (Captured Tracks)
A song called “Goo” comes about halfway through Juan Wauters’ solo debut. “I am playing the guitar/Just ’cause I’m good at it,” he speak-sings while adequately playing the guitar. “Spreading feelings through my throat/Coming out as phrase. Don’t you wonder how it feels/To have someone limit you?” he continues, eventually circling around to connect the rhyme with the song’s title like a badass second grader.
The stitched-together lyrics compresses the charm of N.A.P. North American Poetry into 40 seconds: overly simplistic reflection foiled with a shot of harsher reality, both halves shrugged off in cracked English. Though toeing the gum-smacking snark of his mainstay band The Beets (the album opens with “Let Me Hip You to Something,” as if he’s an expat from the 1950s), here the crumpled folk and sketched pop turns inward–a missing link between Daniel Johnston and Jonathan Richman. The album radiates with an authenticity that comes from immediate, off-the-cuff thoughts before they’ve had time to mature into articulate. In Wauters we have the ultimately relatable protagonist.