Update: Precocious Neophyte have canceled this September appearance. The band’s next scheduled show is Mon 10/2 at Cafe Mustache in support of Jyonson Tsu, current vocalist for Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO.
By 2021, I knew every dusty corner of my two-bedroom apartment so well—and my world during that stage of the pandemic contained so little else—that my everyday reality felt suffocating and small. That year, South Korean singer-songwriter Jeehye Ham started working on her debut album as Precocious Neophyte in her Chicago apartment, but her home-recorded dream pop doesn’t feel confined—it’s as endless as a clear horizon. The tranquil warmth of Home in the Desert (released in 2022 and just reissued in an expanded version by Savannah-slash-Chicago label Graveface) calms and comforts like a hearty stew on a winter evening. Ham sings in Korean, and her willowy, almost whispered vocals seem to melt into the resonant synths and thick, reverb-treated guitar, which echoes like nets of crisscrossing ripples propagating across a pond. Her minimal bass and drum patterns don’t usually do much but give her lush melodies something to drape themselves over, but she can kick the rhythm section into afterburner mode when she needs to—a quick, sharp drum fill in the middle of “Yasik (Midnight Meal)” blows up the song into a saturated wall of sound. Given how much space Ham can fill with her solo work, I’m curious to hear what kind of noise she can make with the full-band version of Precocious Neophyte.
Update: Precocious Neophyte have canceled this appearance.
Precocious Neophyte Blinker headline; Precocious Neophyte, Chaepter, and James Barrs open. Fri 9/8, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $15, 17+