Jason Schwartzman was on Jimmy Kimmel the other night. He was supposed to be talking about "The Darjeeling Limited," the new Wes Anderson movie that he helped co-write and stars in, but before you could say "I wrote a hit play and directed," talk got around to music. Schwartzman, the former drummer for the killer power-pop group Phantom Planet, recorded an album in just a few days that features a whole host of famous guest stars, including Kirsten Dunst (oddly enough), and sounds like a less country version of Blake Sennett's side project band The Elected, but one that blows smoke doughnuts the way someone looking down the valleys of Laurel Canyon would. We've been waiting forever for the movie to come out and didn't realize until now that we should have been just as eagerly anticipating the debut solo album from Schwartzman, which he packages with Polaroid photos he shoots of random objects – his elbow, a signpost, things of varying degrees of randomness, which seems to be his modus operandi. "West Coast" – a song that was awarded the grand prize award of $5,000 by the fans at OurStage.com, a new web site for indie music and film discovery (and a good friend of Mr. Daytrotter) – piggybacks some of the blue water verve of his former band's distracting hit "California" – but where he strays is into the more red-eyed feelings of the place and missing it. It rains more there this time of year – though those Californian rains never last for long and it's that message of that song that springs out like an alligator in a children's pop up book – standing tall near the end with an uplifting choral gang-up that makes it feel like the skies breaking open for some good stuff. Schwartzman doesn't stop there on his album, moving forward with the ideas and experimenting all across all kinds of genres, doing that flexing of muscles thing that's been known to happen – giving us his very own All-Time Quarterback project. – Sean Moeller

West Coast on OurStage

Coconut Records Official Site
The Darjeeling Limited Trailer
All-Time Quarterback