In 2015, around the release of the Austin group’s second album Space Is Still The Place, Jackie’s brother Alex, the band’s manager of four years, was deep in the delusional throes of severe and sudden bipolar 1 disorder. It was a time of immense stress and intensity for the musicians, who began writing songs for a new album as Alex spiraled. The songs took a turn when Alex took his own life, witnessed in its aftermath by Jackie.
“It was a terrible thing, but it was also the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced and probably will ever experience,” Jackie says. "Not all the songs are about Alex, but even the ones that aren’t have a bittersweet mix of overwhelming beauty and terrible loss. The music deals with the ripples it caused in all of our lives.”
The contiguous albums, titled after Alex’s middle name, are about what it means to lose someone and be left to pick up the pieces, exhibiting elements of indie, shoegaze, Krautrock and new wave. Vol. I faces the immediate violence of Alex’s death while Vol. II accepts and appreciates the beauty of it all, eventually finding gratitude. The album is a piercing, epic journey of psychedelia with a melancholic feeling throughout.