Jimmy (CD)

At least at first, Briston Maroney didn't want to call his explosive and engrossing third album Jimmy. He wanted to call it Jellyfish, the name taken from a poem he wrote when he was nine: "Jellyfish/The whole ocean/But nowhere to go." That was a year before Maroney wrote his first song and many years before he had the language to describe what he was feeling, depression. That poem was a pivotal moment for Maroney, since he suddenly understood that he could use art and self-expression-at that point, poetry; for the last two decades, mostly music-to help make sense of the turmoil in his mind, heart, and life. But Maroney eventually realized that the idea of the jellyfish was too hopeless for what's actually happening on Jimmy, a song cycle about scraping the bottom of mental, social, and emotional barrels and holding on long enough to do what can sometimes seem like life's true masterpiece: simply being yourself.