The brightly infectious “So Good (I Could Die)” turned me onto J Bengoy this past May, showcasing a fun-loving twang reminiscent of Wilco and Beulah. The act – based out of Burlington, Vermont – impresses again with their new track “Reprise (Marthasville)”. This one pursues a more alt-rock-leaning feel, with a yearning “I want you” vocal hook complemented by fun, jangly guitars that ascend to a fantastic guitar emphasis past the two-minute mark, complemented by a bouncy organ accompaniment. The build-up to the two-minute mark, and what follows after, is a piece of fantastic songwriting that again affirms J Bengoy as a very capable act.
“The idea for the song came to me in the Atlanta airport after a flight back from Costa Rica about 2 years ago,” explains member Justin Barton. “While in Costa Rica, I had gotten stuck in a rip tide while body surfing (poorly, I might add) and sucked out a ways from shore. I managed to get back safely but the near-death experience, as you can imagine, brought out a decent amount of existential angst. In the next few months, I quit my desk job, started an Americorps year for COTS (a non-profit focused on preventing homelessness), and wrote the first J Bengoy EP. Also around that time, my girlfriend and I had just broken up so I thought a lot about love, longing, and desire in the context of existentialism. To get to the point – I re-discovered something that people have known for a long time – that love, longing, and desire can pull you out of existential ennui and angst.”
