Imagine if T.Rex’s Marc Bolan was giving very liberal vocal lessons to Cedric Bixler of The Mars Volta and Guy Picciotto of Fugazi. Now, imagine a cat being squeezed through a pasta strainer.  This is the enigma of Johnny Whitney’s voice.

Johnny Whitney and Cody Vololato of the Blood Brothers and Pretty Girls Make Graves guitarist Jay Clark come together to form Jaguar Love, a brazen, off kilter rock salad bar. On Jaguar Love EP, you start with your basic bombast rock salad, and as you move down the line, stranger and stranger ingredients are added. We aren’t talking croutons, here. The instrumentation supporting Whitney’s squealing is a sloppy collage of brash guitar buzz, choral vocal interludes and rolling punch drums. Add to that some pattering organ, minimal synthesizer, and something that sounds like a koto (quite possibly a koto) to fill in this ramshackle mess. It is apparent that Jaguar Love has done its part to cause gritting teeth and firmly perked eyebrows.

Whitney’s voice is a love/hate affair (and it’s mostly hate). At one point you could find his falsetto R&B chorus on ‘My Organ Sounds Like…’ rather charming – however, that feeling is instantly dashed by the persistently volatile scream-squeals that are to follow. If Whitney wasn’t hellbent on sounding like a dolphin trying to blow his nose, the overall tone of Jaguar Love would actually be pretty decent. The music is solid, it’s frantic, it’s theatrical, but it’s fun.

It is a shame to have to harp on Whitney’s singing to such a degree, with such solid backing musicianship, however the frequencies at which his voice scatters around are the exact pitches that make you forget about all that is good in the world. If this EP is an indication of what is to come…well, all I can say is that I hope you like cats, dolphins and The Mars Volta.

Michael Tenzer