Words by Jason Lee. Photographs by Jason Lee but not the same Jason Lee.
Is Victor Jones a construct?
It’s the topmost question in this writer’s mind at the moment in time—or maybe the second topmost question just behind whether this great nation is about to elect the Crypt Keeper or Colonel Klink to be our next president–to which you may reply, what is it that even leads you to question whether Victor Jones is a “construct” and by the way who is this Victor Jones character, which are good questions and in reply, while we admittedly don’t know much of anything about Victor Jones’s background, what we do know is that his Instragram handle is @victorjonesisaconstruct and also that his Spotify bio reads “Victor Jones is a construct,” and that he presents a monthly show at The Tank called Victor Jones Is A Construct that’s described as such…
…Victor Jones’ monthly rock concert–slash–theatrical experience at The Tank explore[s] the nature of performance, both on stage and off, and the personalities we perform as. Each edition features Jones, a camera crew, and a theater production team who create a set and come up with the live segments. February’s show will include a stage play and original songs from Jones’ pop-rock band that will be filmed live and ultimately edited into a “faux-vanity project movie that asks the question: are we always performing?”
…and tho’ we haven’t seen the theatrical production yet (unfortunately!) we have seen Victor Jones perform with his “pop-rock band” a couple times (fortunately!) once at the venerable East Village venue Pianos, and once at a show booked by none other than The Deli as part of our “First Fridays” summer concert series at Bar Freda based on seeing him at Pianos, and we think it’s fair to say that both performances had a “theatrical” air to them even tho’ they had no explicit plot or use of props or other trapping of the world of theater…
…but there’s still something that feels theatrical about Victor Jones and his live band—maybe cuz a lot of the songs sound like they’re taken from a rock musical in the wheelhouse of Hedwig and the Angry Inch or Repo! The Genetic Opera or Rocky Horror Picture Show (of course!) played by fugitives from a Broadway pit band who most definitely know how to rock out but who also carry traces of the more fastidious playing style and arrangements one hears on the Great White Way with heavy a heavy piano and/or keyboard presence, alongside vigorously strummed acoustic guitar, various forms of non-trap-kit percussion and use of (synthetic) strings too, all of which likewise harkens back to a classic ‘70s glam rock vibe as well (which really is basically Broadway meets rock ’n’ roll when you think about it)…
…not to even mention Victor Jones’s stage appearance decked out in a flower-print jacket with matching pink-flower garland sat atop his head to boot, giving off the aura of a young Charles Laughton playing Roman emperor Nero in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1932 biblical potboiler The Sign of the Cross—and btw did you know that most historians today believe that Nero wasn’t the crazed, inept ruler he’s typically portrayed to be but instead was a widely loved “man of the masses” whose populist bent pissed off much of the elite class in Rome which is the vibe we get from Victor Jones too (the populist bent) but with maybe a hint of Nero’s alleged madness thrown into the mix for good measure—with a well-honed yet naturalistic “playing to the cheap seats” outsized delivery on stage that get audiences all riled up as we’ve witnessed twice now and speaks to possible training in the thespian arts…
…but we really don’t know and that’s the fun thing about it (or one of them anyway) cuz we’re not quite sure if Victor Jones is playing a character whose dramatis personae is also named “Victor Jones” (i.e., a construct) or if Victor Jones is just Victor Jones, and truth be told we don’t really wanna know “the truth’ of the matter either cuz it encourages us to turn the question back on ourselves to a degree and ask “are we always performing?” which is where things get quite compelling and speaking of compelling Victor’s songs are just that both musically and lyrically if you’re so predisposed as in little mini-narratives with all kinds of odd, quirky details that feel like they must’ve been excerpted from an unfinished screenplay, probably something intended for off-Broadway seeing as they’re a bit edgy for today’s Disneyfied 21st century version of Broadway…
…with songs like “The Sun From Underwater” (the opening track off from 2023’s Apocalypse Crush) where during the discofied breakdown section V.J. goes into full-on spoken monologue mode, going on a surreal spiel where he takes on the “personal” of a blood-staved shark who’s forgotten how to breathe, and then a remorseless police chief who aspires to be Bruce Springsteen and/or Jesus Christ (“I’ve lived too long / I wanna live forever / with holes all over”) finally concluding that “I wanna fuck to something no one’s every fucked to before…Penderecki!” and the whole thing comes off something like a white Barry White going into one of his seductive soliloquies after dropping several tabs of acid…
…and then there’s Victor’s voice itself which is likewise a voice of the people, appealingly unconventional for a “pop-rock artist” that comes across both highly conversational and highly theatricalized in tone, oft alternating within a single song between wavering wistfulness and a more forceful delivery in the songs’ punchier sections a way which again rather provoxatifely straddles the line between “gut-check authenticity” however off-kilter and a one-man play put on by Mr. Jones and his backing band, and again we’re all about it cuz really what’s more provocative than straddling lines plus we love us some good “deconstructing the construct” especially when delivered with plenty of pop smarts and catchy hooks to boot…
…all of which applying just as much to Victor Jones’s brand new single “String Lights” which moves fluidly between portraying “Victor Jones” as a private and a public persona and a set dresser to boot starting off by declaring “I got some strings lights / that I’ll hang up in my room” sung over lonely woodblock rhythm and hovering synths strings, before moving on to a more ambitious stance in the second verse where the line is alteted slightly but significantly to “I got some string lights to hang over the world” that’ll “make everything nice” sung over a pulsating disco beat…
…and we can’t quite sort out whether Victor sounds more buoyant than desperate or vice-versa eithet way we’re feelin’ the ambiguity yet again as Mr. Jones and his band move from a calm, almost meditative opening to what feels like near mania “splitting me in half” (note the distressed animal sounds and explosions) as V.J. seeks to alleviate the “doctor’s office lighting” of his room and “fix [his] mood” with a lighting scheme altogether more dramatic and fantastical by means of some modest “string lights” with his audience ever in mind as an unnamed “she” complains that Victor’s room “isn’t feng shui at all” but hey we’re 100% behind Victor Jones’s efforts to “make everyone happy,” whether he’s a construct or not, cuz let’s be honest this world is feeling pretty dire lately and if he’s “got some posters” and plans to “hang ‘em on the buildings / before they get blown up,” well, we’ll gladly take what we can get…