walter jones

Doesn’t look much like a deep house maverick, does it? Something about Walter Jones, the guy, and the hauntingly perfect single he’s just released, I’ll Keep On Loving You, doesn’t seem to add up.

The ho-hum, could-be-your-postman name. The hometown (New Orleans — not exactly a dance music mecca). The fact Jones has been making music for around 20 years and has (according to Discogs) a total of six singles, including this one.

And, of course, all of this is before you find out that the breathy, spaced-out vocals on both tracks of Loving You don’t come from a trilling, hired diva, but from Jones himself. Bathed in reverb, on maximum falsetto, but Jones nonetheless. I replayed each track several times when I read about the vocals and it remains somewhat astonishing each time. He burrows under self deprecation when talking about the process — he “added lots of reverb to disguise my horrible singing voice” and it “ended up [being] a really bad impression of Curtis Mayfield’s falsetto” — but the results are undeniable.

“Living Without Your Love,” the b-side, is what initially won me over. The stuttering vocal, the pillowy synths, the almost-funky programming. It’s really the vocal melody that cinches it, though — an immediate earworm that I’ve been singing in my head (and out loud in the hallways around eMusic HQ when I don’t catch myself) on a loop for the past few weeks.

Loving You has been repeatedly described as “lo-fi,” but it’s all relative of course. Some of the tinniness of the drums and the ocean-deep reverb might sound dollar-store to a Resident Advisor regular used to an (on average) more polished and precise production aesthetic, but this isn’t Wavves-gone-disco or anything. “Living” especially feels diffuse and totally airy and, ultimately, just fucking beautiful.

Even if you’re a dance music dabbler, it’s absolutely worth investigating Walter Jones’ surprisingly homespun and lush take on nu-disco.