Congratulations

A few years ago, Jenn Wasner seemed to be forever asking her partner, Alan Good Parker, who was singing that song on their Los Angeles stereo. The answer was almost always the same: another demo from Jacob Ungerleider, an unassuming pianist from Virginia that Parker had met when they both toured with Natalie Prass and who had recently moved west. Wasner wanted in. She first told Ungerleider she wanted to hear his demos, too, that she needed these sad, sweet, stark pop songs in her life. And then she took the next step. Though Ungerleider was making a career as a sideman, seemingly touring and recording in multiple bands at every given moment, the Flock of Dimes and Wye Oak singer thought he should step out as a songwriter, to offer these tunes to people beyond their text chain. She vowed to help.The result is Congratulations, a beautiful and bittersweet set of 12 songs that will crack your heart and your humor, that will blur the boundary between a smile and a frown, that will introduce you to a new bedroom pop auteur who wears a heart on his sleeve that might look a lot like yours. Though Ungerleider has released songs of his own before, both under his own name and to acclaim as Grebes, Wasner rightfully believed that he’d simply sit on these tunes as he went about his sideman business. She sorted through old demos and new numbers, arranging and compiling and producing, and even started her own label, 2 Heads, to release Congratulations. That’s because to hear these songs is to be smitten with them, even as they hold up a mirror to our most engrained insecurities.