Jimmie Kilpatrick - Jimmie
You’ve Changed Records
Released April 11, 2025
As underscored by its title, Jimmie is the first release under the real name of Jimmie Kilpatrick, who has long performed as Shotgun Jimmie. Kilpatrick may have put away his gun, but he’s kept busy since his last album, with projects that include recording the Hardly Working EP with members of the Burning Hell, contributing to a Joel Plaskett tribute compilation, and completing an MFA under Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. The fruits of this last endeavour make an appearance on Jimmie, as Kilpatrick incorporates experimental recording methodologies while delivering more of the ever-catchy hooks and clever, empathic lyrics he’s known for.
One of these beguiling explorations provides a soundscape for the first song: “Tape Loop” is named for a fifteen-foot tape loop recording of the album’s six players. Created using a process that emphasized different points in the track and physical space, the result is “an aural documentation of time and place [that] also holds analog technology as a metaphor for the human body—constantly decaying, from time to time in need of repair, and eventually dying.”
The reverberant effects of this process accentuate the melancholy of the lyrics and set the tone for an album that is both an earnest alt-rock offering and a work of sonic art.
“Answering Machine” urges listeners to “get your finger off the screen, make a karaoke connection,” introducing one of the album’s recurrent themes; phone references abound, as the songs grapple with technological changes that lead to both connection and isolation.
Kilpatrick calls the album a “a meditation on life, death, love and friendship,” and indeed, there is always depth and reflection behind the often playful lyrics. “Gum” points out that by a certain age, “all the gum you swallowed in high school is now gone” (there is a demographic of people who believe, to the cores of our being and even a decade after its debunking, the myth that swallowed gum sits in your intestines for seven years). The song warns, “listen to the static on the phone, surely you made it,” reminding us that we risk losing the close ties of our youth at any stage of success, even one as ambiguous as “making it.”
If Semisonic’s “Closing Time” uses a closing bar as a metaphor for birth, the last call in “Satellite” represents the opposite. Patrons are cast out of a venue where “the floor isn’t breathing anymore,” and into the night: “All kidding aside, there’s nowhere to hide …” The track features more aural experimentation, including “the boisterous swooping sounds of a tangerine-sized marble rolling along the strings of a robotic bass guitar.”
In an album exploring life, love, and death, nostalgia is to be expected. “Garbage Gloves” references some beloved Winnipeg-abelia, “Sharpie” searches for permanence, and “Julia” recalls a past friendship or romance—“Fell asleep talking on the phone, woke up when I heard the dial tone”—and ends with a majestic guitar solo and a cheerleader chant of “Julia, J-U-L-I-A,” (perhaps a more lighthearted “Gloria,” for those nostalgic for that particular musical era).
“Spark” is another highlight, from its opening of, “I’m looking for a spark that’ll start a fire that’ll burn for the rest of my life,” to a bridge of counted “Mississippis” (“one-” to “forty-five-Mississippi,” if anyone’s inclined to perform any numerological divinations) and subtle cello and pedal steel features from Kilpatrick’s skilled collaborators.
Jimmie’s final track cheekily quotes Joni, “I could drink a case of you / and I’d still be on my phone.” This probably isn’t the innocent phone fallen asleep on in “Julia,” whose dial tone soundtracked a meaningful memory and rarely threatened to take over one’s entire life. Still, as the song unfolds, depicting a band playing their something-hundredth show, the tone is of loving reminiscence: “Breath in the night like you used to breathe smokes.” Layered sound effects in an instrumental interlude hearken back to the loops of the first track, providing extra intrigue but never overshadowing the warmth and humour that Kilpatrick has always excelled at—under any name.
