photo by Angie Norman

words by Chance Solem-Pfeifer

Imagine Nikola Tesla musing about death and the secrets of the universe. Now put him in a Cadillac with the top down and the radio playing softly on Lover’s Lane, and you have a few drops of Jake Bellows’ New Ocean.

Bellows, the Omaha singer, guitarist and songwriter, mentions Tesla’s outlook on existence — understood via the smallest frequencies and vibrations — as a lens through which to view New Ocean, his first solo studio album.

Themes of life and death on the largest scale bookend an album that is also capable of playing small ball, sewing humanity’s biggest questions in and out of cell phone pictures and front porches.

Bellows was the frontman of the Omaha indie band Neva Dinova (long-time scene stablemates of Bright Eyes and Cursive) for more than 15 years before moving to California in the late 2000s where he played with Whispertown.

On this record, he’s joined on the record by a cast including Ben Brodin, Ryan Fox (The Good Life), Heath Koontz (Neva Dinova) and Todd Fink (The Faint) who help create a sedated doo-wop sound complicated by the sudden presence of rowdy guitar and a few West Coast indie rock songs, like “Running From Your Love.”

New Ocean will be officially released on August 6 on Saddle Creek Records. But first, sit back with HN’s Michael Todd and Chance Solem-Pfeifer and unpack the album’s relationship to love and death and the bossa nova style that sounds a little like an early ‘60s prom band if your prom band sang penetrating lyrics and cut loose noisy solos.

ALBUM REVIEW PODCAST:

Chance Solem-Pfeifer is Hear Nebraska’s staff writer. He thinks this is a great album to shoulder dance to and you can reach him at chancesp@hearnebraska.org.