It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jukebox the Ghost is touring despite not releasing a record of new material in nearly two years. By their own calculations, the Washington, D.C. trio of vocalist/pianist Ben Thornewill, guitarist Tommy Siegel and drummer Jesse Kristin has played “almost 1,000 shows” since unveiling its full-length debut, Let Live and Let Ghosts, in 2008. For the uninitiated, Jukebox the Ghost draws from a host of piano-driven Pop Rock acts, from Billy Joel to Ben Folds Five and everything in between. The band’s 2014 self-titled album (their latest full-length) is its sleekest and most accessible offering yet, moving from the throbbing, synth-kissed “Made for Ending,” which would sound right at home on Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, to the spare and earnest “Undeniable You,” which utilizes the trio’s impassioned vocal harmonizing as Thornewill admits that the “you” of the song’s title has changed him through and through. Speaking of changes, the trio collaborated with each other more then ever when writing Jukebox the Ghost. They even co-wrote some songs with people outside the band for the first time.“I sort of always treated songwriting as almost a sacred, magical thing that just seemed to happen and you had no control over it,” Siegel told PopMatters when the eponymous record dropped in 2014. “What co-writing helped me realize, with Ben or Jesse, or with a ton of other people I’ve co-written with in the last year, has been … that it’s kind of just showing up. If you get into a room with someone else with the goal of writing a song, you’re going to write a song. How good that song is is kind of up to you.” But, as ever, the true essence of Jukebox the Ghost all comes back to the band’s exuberant live shows and this succinct sentence in the first paragraph of the band’s website bio: “We like touring.”
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This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2016.