A Ballad Of Jackie Dandelion Director’s Cut version of Phantom of The Afters is coming April 5th on Soft Boy Records.
A new song ‘London Lido’ is out today ahead of a new version of the album, which includes ‘Ballad Of Jackie Dandelion’.
Says Kojaque:
“I wanted to make a Directors Cut of Phantom Of The Afters because there were a couple of songs that I loved that got left off the original project mainly because a vinyl can only hold about 45 minutes of music. All of the tunes feel like they sit in the same world so it felt right to release them as part of an alternative version of the album rather than saving them for a future project. They need to be Jackie Dandelion tunes.
Releasing the record as an independent artist has been nerve wracking but the response has been crazy. I always imagined the Ballad Of Jackie Dandelion as being the intro to the record so to have that go viral without ever being released felt like vindication. Just feels good to have complete control over what I put out in the world, doing shit however I feel like doing it. Feels like I’ve gotten back to making art without worrying what people think, making it because it’s what I want to see in the world, even if what I make comes out a little grotesque. Fuck it, the best art is usually a little rough around the edges.”
Of the Phantom Of The Afters album, I wrote:
Phantom Of The Afters speaks to the thousands of young Irish people who can relate to the volatility of starting a new life elsewhere, and the subsequent guilt, while feeling the invisible thread tethering you to your friends and family back home.
The second album proper from Kojaque, after 2021s Town’s Dead, and the 2016 Deli Daydreams mixtape, finds the Irish artist wresting with being one of the people who have “taken the soup”, and moved to London for art’s sake.
To “take the soup” in Ireland’s famine past, generally meant renouncing your Catholic faith in favour of English Protestantism in times of desperate hunger.
In a modern context, “taking the soup” is emigrating from Ireland for London for more opportunity. A chant of “Jackie took the soup” sets the album’s scene.
Wearing the alterego of Jackie Dandelion, a character named after the Fontaines DC song ‘Jackie Down the Line’ with the artwork modelled on bigoted depictions of Irish people in 19th/20th century Punch Magazine cartoons further underscores the theme.
