Tony Jay • Knife Is But A Dream • 2024

The songs, themselves, retain a skeletal elegance, a stark contrast to the swirling chaos that surrounds them. The final product evokes the image of a charcoal sketch, rendered with swift strokes and unwavering confidence, a fleeting moment of beauty captured for all time.

Knife Is But A Dream is a beautiful album of sonic escapades and lo-fi balladry, a mixture of ambient instrumentals and the JAMC with a hangover feeling of the sentimental and melancholy, and expressing their feelings into a lo-fi recording device. Another example how beautiful and rewarding for the heart and soul it can be to make and listen to music recorded in a home setting. An album to close one eyes to and drift off to a more relaxing and safe heavenly moment. - Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea (Monolith Cocktail)

Along with Flowertown, Cindy, and April Magazine, Tony Jay closes the circle of Bay Area bands that wander through the fogged end of the indie pop scene… [“The Darkest Corner”] is aloft on a bed of synth and hiss, giving proper ambience to Michael Ramos’s strums and soft delivery. A home-recorded gem that’s built to bridge the bad times, the new record. - Andy French (Raven Sings The Blues)