Matt Easton

Singer/guitarist Matt Easton drew comparisons to Neil Finn and Chris Isaak, yet his chief aim in the early ’90s remained simply getting his songs played, a goal that carried the Jenny Thing onto the television program Star Search. He assembled the group in 1991 while attending U.C. Berkeley, enlisting Shyam Rao on guitar, Ehren Becker on bass, and Mike Phillips on drums.

Easton, born in Oakland, had studied piano in childhood; Rao later showed him the guitar. With the Jenny Thing he developed a lovelorn vocal approach whose assurance and emotional reach deepened across each release. Although he admired the ’80s new-wave bands the Cure, the Smiths, and the Police, the quartet’s 1993 debut, Me, appeared on Kendall Swim School Records without embracing the prevailing macho aggression of the era; instead the album revealed the introspective songwriting and melancholic crooning that Easton would pursue once he began working alone. Two further albums followed before the Jenny Thing disbanded.

In 2000 he completed the five-track Love Ambition Demo, which he issued himself online. The recording discarded the Cure and New Order touches that had colored the Jenny Thing’s work, favoring instead a somber, dreamy atmosphere that recalled the Red House Painters.