Cloudy June’s “jAGUAR” is a song about the moment a poster on a bedroom wall becomes a stand-in for salvation. The track is her third self-produced release, an acoustic guitar with old strings kept on, hard-hitting minimalistic drums underneath, a song that started in a Berlin bedroom at 5 a.m. The mix has the size of a bedroom in it.
“jAGUAR” does its work in the title. The word is a Fender guitar, a classic car, a predator animal, and a teenage crush all at once, and the song doesn’t pick. Cloudy has said the song is about the idea that someone holding a guitar can save you, and the saving is the part that has aged. The teenager who believed a rockstar could save her is the same woman now writing the song, but the woman knows the guitar was a stand-in. The acoustic carries the old strings. The drums hit where the body would.
“jAGUAR” arrives after Cloudy’s EP “you ruined me but it was fun,” a record about a relationship ending and creative trust being rebuilt. The Fender Jaguar is the guitar of a teenage altar, and naming the song after it is a way of saying which posters were on the bedroom wall. The poster is still on the wall. The woman who hung it has met the rockstar.
