Rogue + Jaye - Pent Up (2017)

Collaborations between two independently successful artists can be tricky to nail, often times sounding more like friends playing on each others’ songs rather than a true melding of ideas. With Rogue + Jaye, a duo featuring Rogue Wave’s Zach Rogue and singer-songwriter Courtney Jaye, that’s not the case, though. The pair recently announced their debut album, titled Pent Up, and today have shared that the record is set to be released May 5. In addition to Rogue and Jaye, the album features additional instrumentation from drummer Michael Libramento along with Floating Action guitarist Seth Kauffman and Band of Horses bassist Bill Reynolds, and was recorded at Reynolds’ Nashville studio with engineer Logan Matheny.

After coming together during a songwriting session years ago, the two finally released the first song from their collaboration last December via Rolling Stone Country, the subdued “Forces of Decay,” and now coupled with their album release date announcement, they’ve released another new track, “Little Relief.”

At its heart, “Little Relief” is an Americana song, bordering on country, but, when you add in the punched-up production and shimmering guitars that come courtesy of Matheny and Kauffman, respectively, it becomes bigger and more undefinable, and all the better for it. The musical ambiguity provides something akin to nostalgia, though you can’t quite point to what it is you’re nostalgic for, and the voices of Jaye and Rogue become the song’s centerpiece more than anything else. The two singers feel like equal players, which likely has something to do with the fact that the song doesn’t really sound like either of the artists’ own projects, but something wholly new. Of the chemistry between the two, Rogue states, “We have this thing, and I don’t really know why, it’s just a comfort level. We have this easy spirit with each other where I like hearing her sing, and I feel very comfortable proposing ideas.”

TRACKLIST

01. Over and Over
02. Golden Lady
03. Open Your Mind
04. Little Relief
05. Forces of Decay
06. Heartbeat Wildly
07. Don't Say
08. Til It Fades
09. Spider and Fly
10. Claws