Whole Lotta Love album cover
It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from the Southern California duo Renee & Jeremy. While both Renee Stahl and Jeremy Toback made music in the meantime, particularly Renee with a couple of well-received albums with a series of musical partners (including Toback) under the Renee & Friends moniker, it’s been nearly a decade since the duo last released an album together.
But the memories of parents sitting in quiet rooms with their young ones don’t fade easily. Their first two albums in particular — It’s a Big World and C’mon — were in constant rotation in Little Boy Blue’s preschool years in the Zooglobble household. Those albums were followed in 2012 by a holiday-themed album and an album of covers called A Little Love which showcased the duo’s lovely harmonies on often surprising arrangements of modern classic pop and rock songs.
Luckily for those families with long memories (and for families who might not have even been families nine years ago, R&J are back with a new album next week! It’s called Whole Lotta Love and it’s the spiritual successor to A Little Love as it’s another album of (almost entirely) covers. I’ve enjoyed their first two singles from the album, their versions of the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” and Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Sweet Child ‘O Mine” (the latter a refreshingly different take on the song), and judging by the YouTube comments (I know, never read the comments), their are lots of families who are eager for the duo’s return.
Renee Stahl and Jeremy Toback standing in a field
The new album dips from the same well of intriguing covers A Little Love dipped from, with a cover of MGMT’s “Kids,” for example, sitting alongside one of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everyday People.” (I particularly enjoyed the leadoff track, a take on INXS’ “Don’t Change.”)
But there’s one original song on the album, “Here and Now,” and I’m glad I get to world premiere the video for that song. The song itself considers the impermanence of things and the importance of being present. (It’s not a Buddhist song… but I think a lot of Buddhists would recognize many of the concepts here.) The video, directed by Ron Hamad, a commercial and film director and friends with the duo, captures the mood and lyrics well, with Renee and Jeremy walking through abandoned buildings amidst the Salton Sea. Toback says the video shoot consisted of just the three of them plus director of photography Wes Cardino “chasing magic,” in Hamad’s phrase. The ending scene under an amazingly glowing moon, happened by accident, they report. Like much of Renee & Jeremy’s music, the video’s a little mesmerizing.
Again, Whole Lotta Love is out next week! Having listened to it all, I know that if your family still grooves to the music they made before, they will dig this, too.
Renee & Jeremy - “Here and Now” [YouTube]
Photo credit: Stuart Burton
