Music / Jack Stauber

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen! Yes, yes, thank you all for coming out. Tonight, we've got a wild, wild show for you all, so let's give it over to Jack Stauber!

Jack Stauber is a Synthwave/"Micropop"/Bedroom indie artist on YouTube and Bandcamp. His appeal lies not just in his nostalgic, lofi sound and unique vocals but in his whimsical, retraux, and often downright bizarre music videos.

He has released 4 albums:

• Finite Form (2013)
• Viator (2015)
• Pop Food (2017)
• HiLo (2018)

Also in the list of his works are:

• Micropop: A side project where Jack periodically releases extended versions of songs featured in his YouTube videos, most of which were originally on Patreon. As of the start of 2020, seven "Micropop"s have come out (six LPs and a 99 song album).
• SHOP: A Pop Opera (2019): A five episode animated miniseries created by Jack Stauber for [adult swim].
• OPAL (2020): An animated short film created by Jack Stauber for [adult swim].
• He was also the lead singer of 2 bands, Joose & Zaki.

Tropes found in his music include:

• Accidental Murder: In "The Ballad of Hamantha", after the titular character receives a call from a doctor, stating that a cure for her rare condition was found, she is accidentally shot dead by her father. Fate can truly be cruel.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In "Dinner is Not Over", the list of things the singer says he's "tasted" over the course of his life includes friendship, you (implying romance), dying, heartbreak, and food.
• After the End: The theme evoked by New Normal, which includes shots of a hillside bunker and masses of people drifting into the sky as if being raptured. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was released when the U.S. was still adjusting to the drastic self-isolation measures from the COVID-19 pandemic.
  Goodbye to those who cannot join us
  Their voices are still heard in every word that we say
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Robert from "Work" can't even take the time to plug in the computer in his office without shifting into an improvised song about plugging it in.
• Author Appeal: Jack has a tooth collection. As such, many of his videos have teeth used as props.
  • This is also the case with the actual VHS Tapes used in his videos, since he also collects VHS Tapes.
• Bait-and-Switch: "PBJ" has Katie argue with her father over the fact that he put peanut butter on her sandwich. At one point her father says that he knows she misses her mom, implying that she either died or left them somethime before the short, cue Katie's mom walking into the house declaring that she's returned from her day trip to Wisconsin, much to Katie's delight.
• Body Horror: Quite a few of his videos feature this.
  • "Pumpkin Song" has the titular Pumpkin cause a little Kid to lose his teeth, become blind, and become dizzy.
  • "Cupid" depicts a creature living inside Jack's ear canal and it ends up getting shot in the face (presumably by Jack himself).
  • Also applies to "Lima Bean Man", where the guy's girlfriend dissolves into a skeleton while he hopes that she’s not dead.
  • "Dead Weight" shows Jack with a face on his chest.
  • "Keyman" has a scene where Jack has a fetal version of himself growing in him.
  • Happens in "Echo Co Co" when it shows creatures (including Jack himself) with gaping black eyes
  • "Deploy" shows a face with white suit and black tie grows another hands
• Broken Record: On the Micropop album, there surely is a song about this.
• Bungled Suicide: "Dinner is Not Over" hints at this:
  I've tasted friendship, I've tasted you
  I've tasted dying and it tasted good!
  • It's more explicitly brought up in the song's video, which has a shot of a lollipop turning into a noose.
• Call-Back: The second-to-last song of HiLo, "O.U.R.", has a section in it straight from his earlier album Viator's song, "Red Press":
  Yellow sunshine rays are out
  Stay at home and laze about
  Yellow sunshine rays are out
  Stay at home
  • It was more prominent in the Reviator album due to the album being a recreation of his Viator songs, with the exception of having his current style
• Creator Cameo: A common thing for Jack to do in his live action music videos, usually with other people or cartoon characters (see Roger Rabbit Effect below).
• Deliberate VHS Quality: Most of his videos are sent through a real VHS tape, and then digitized before uploading.
• Disguised Horror Story:
  • "Pumpkin Song" fits with that one (because it looks normal until the pumpkin does a Body Horror at the kid)
  • "Lima Bean Man" is also this. It starts out happy, but then it dimishes as he begins to sing his Madness Mantra about not wanting his wife to be dead
• Driven to Suicide: "Cupid" implies this.
  Circumcise my love for you (Waaaa waaa waaa waaa waaa)
  It's far too vapid and aimless...
  (Waaaa waaa waaa waaaa) I wanna be painless.
  Love solider, *Gunshot* I want closure
• Evolving Music: Jack's first album, Finite Form, sounds like your standard techno indie album. Viator is a largely experimental album featuring a lot of brief samples and improvised songs. Pop Food is the first big jump into his current style, featuring two of his most iconic pieces, "Buttercup" and "Oh Klahoma". HiLo's songs, meanwhile, show off Jack's new style in its entirety, featuring all of the off-the-wall lyrics and sounds he's known for. Fast forward yet another year and you have his Micropop EPs, which are expansions of his samples and experimental pieces.
• Faux Affably Evil: The titular Pumpkin from "Pumpkin Song". Watch for yourself.
• Genre Shift: A lot of his songs alternate between styles and genres, oftentimes within the same song. Prominent examples include "Leopard," which jumps from a mix of jazz/swing, to electronic, to carnival music, and "Fighter," which jumps from electronic pop to 1950's-style rock and roll, to opera.
• Gratuitous Latin: In "Curl", Latin is used 4 times between the 1st & 2nd verses.
• Gut Punch: "The Ballad of Hamantha" really packs one of these.
• The Hero Dies: Hamantha ends up being accidentally shot in the head by her father as she's running to the doctor for a cure for her condition.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: This is how Hamantha dies in "The Ballad of Hamantha".
• Indecipherable Lyrics: It doesn’t help that the lyrics are rarely provided. “Goldie” takes it up to eleven by running it through a talkbox-like filter.
• Irony: "View", the completely artificial, CGI-animated, robotically-voiced short about nature boasts that the beauty of it can't be recreated.
• Last Note Nightmare: “Cunk” is a mellow, catchy song until the last few seconds. Then? Get ready for random electronic noise.
  • "Hope" is catchy and energetic up to the last few seconds.
  • John & Nancy also ends on several loud, off key, saxophone notes.
  • Mirror Mirror is pretty normal... until you get the lovely muffled screams of a man drowning at the end.
  • "Deploy" ends on a screechy note that lasts about 6 seconds.
• Littlest Cancer Patient: The titular baby from “Baby Son Adoring Us” can’t be older than 10 months and has some kind of brain condition that causes him severe pain until it claims his life at the end of the video.
• Lyrical Dissonance: Happens quite a few times in his work:
  • “Two Time” is a cheery pop song about cheating on your partner.
  • “Lima Bean Man” has the title character scream about how he hopes his wife isn’t dead while a whimsical child-like song plays along with it.
• Madness Mantra: The lima bean man’s “I HOPE SHE’S NOT DEAD.”
  • "There is no happy end, there's only just The End"
  • "Just a little chunk of hope keeps me going keeps me going every day"
• Miniscule Rocking: Most of the songs uploaded to his channel last less than a minute.
  • Micropop is this as an album, with most of the songs on there being less than a minute long and vastly experimental.
• Missing Mom:
  • The man from "library" lost his mom sometime before the events of the short, and he's staring to forget what she looks like.
  • Hamantha's mom is never mentioned in her song, but it's unknown if her mom is dead, out of the picture, or if she is around, but simply isn't mentioned by the singer.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The music video for "Cupid" starts out with a happily smiling Jack surrounded by hearts. Then the camera zooms into his ear canal, and we see a sad-looking creature lamenting his love life while trying and failing to crawl out.
  • "Pumpkin Song" is also this. It starts with a nice childish song, until you see a pumpkin doing Body Horror on a boy.
  • “Lima Bean Man” starts out like a whimsical children’s fairy tale… until the titular man starts his Madness Mantra about he hopes his wife isn’t dead.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Jack's Adult Swim series SHOP: A Pop Opera centers around an average supermarket run, featuring songs inspired by regular grocery items: milk, bread, paper towels, oatmeal, coffee, and cheese. All of these songs are deeply introspective, dealing with things like mortality, materialism, and the difficulty of fixing problems in your life.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: Some of his videos have real people (usually himself) alongside animated characters.
• Retraux: Almost every single one of his videos is actually run through a VHS, creating a nostalgic effect.
  • His video “Goldie (2018)” is animated in 16-bit pixel art.
  • Some videos include clay animation and primitive CG that wouldn't seem out of place on 1980's-1990's Nickelodeon.
  • "Pumpkin Song" goes a step further by emulating rubber-hose style cartoons.
  • Some videos such as now and then and Goldie (2020) are animated with traditional cel animation.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: A common trope used in his non-musical videos.
• Soap Opera Disease: The baby's condition in "Baby Son Adoring Us" is never named, and is mostly implied to be brain related.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: Many of his songs, particularly his post-HiLo pieces, will swerve right into these.
  • Not even his Patreon advertisement is immune to this:
    Hello. I'm Jack!
    Do you like secret stuff? (Yeah!)
    *distorted* Do you feel like the stuff I gave you wasn't enough? (Uh-huh!)
    Well good news baby!
    I have a ton of stuff, you've never seen before!~
    (How do I get it?) Buy me a cup o' cawfee and we'll talk about it!
  • "Lima Bean Man" is relatively lighthearted... until halfway through the video.
  • "Pumpkin Song" starts off as a rubber hose-style Halloween-like cartoon... until the Pumpkin performs Body Horror on the kid.
  • "The Ballad Of Hamantha" could be considered to fit this too, if you're a first time listener.
• Surreal Music Video: Goes without saying.
• Vocal Dissonance: The woman from "Hope" is presumably the one singing the song, but she has the voice of a grown man
• Wham Line:
  • "A stray bullet shot by her father, aimlessly nested inside her" from the extended version of "Hamantha".
  • "I can make your teeth fall out..." is the line from "Pumpkin Song" that reveals the true nature and intentions of the titular pumpkin.
• You Bastard!: Implied by the increasingly distressed and unhinged tone in the Lima Bean Man's voice in the song "Lima Bean Man" as you and Sabrina fail to send him to the moon by balloon. Especially since Sabrina regularly checks for him to watch him sing his distress call while she continuously fails to help him.