Jaguar TV is the solo project of Philadelphia-based songwriter and musician Matt Paparone, who previously played and produced with Public Health and Northern Breaks. His debut EP, Empty My Heart, is a three-track release recorded and produced out of a South Philly row home, with drums contributed remotely by California-based musician Kevin Kearney. The EP’s title is lifted from an unpublished poem by writer Colin Schmidt, and the whole thing draws from Wipers, Interpol, and Pavement, as well as the broader 2010s Philly indie scene. “Teenage Dream” is its lead single, out May 20th.
Musically, Paparone has a lot of chemistry with his collaborators and managed to create a live feel to this melancholic soundscape. This is the kind of tonality that’ll make you want to gaze longingly from the window of a moving train. It’s made to be a reflective space to process emotional baggage and learn how to deal with it, and Paparone manages to create that space beautifully. The sound is not unique, but the intention and delivery are here, which is all that matters, if you ask me, anyway.
Thematically, “Teenage Dream” is about letting go of the past, of emotional weight, and of the pressure to live out someone else’s vision of who you should be. It’s well-trodden lyrical territory, but Paparone’s references situate it in a lineage that treats that kind of introspection seriously rather than decoratively. For a debut single recorded in a row home, it punches with more atmosphere than it has any right to.
