Jay Watson is an Australian multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter. He is best known as a member of the psychedelic rock bandsTame Impala and Pond. Watson records solo material under the name GUM and has released five albums under this name.
Career
Watson was born in Carnarvon, and grew up in Northam, Western Australia. He was given the nickname Gumby, which referred to the clay animation TV show of the same name. When he began recording his own material, Watson shortened the name to GUM. Under the GUM moniker, Watson released Delorean Highway digitally in Australia on 30 May 2014. Most of the material had been recorded in 2011, leaving Watson to note that "when it finally came out it felt so good! But it felt so old to me". An LP release of Delorean Highway was restricted to a thousand copies. The album was described as a collection of "paranoid pop songs" that are "mostly about falling in love and all of the things that he thinks are going to kill him." In October 2019, Delorean Highway came at no.19 on Happy Mag's list of "The 25 best psychedelic rock albums of the 2010s". In September 2014, Watson recorded his second album in London with the assistance of Jerome Watson. The thirteen track Glamorous Damage, was announced in September 2015 and was released on 13 November 2015. It was preceded by the single "Anaesthetized Lesson", which was remixed by Kevin Parker and released in March 2016. Watson described the title of the album as "about people glamorizing getting fucked up or being weirdos, when there is always a danger you could end up damaged yourself just through putting it on a pedestal". Watson occasionally performs live, using backing tracks. Pitchfork's Stuart Berman described the album as "the 8-bit, Nintendo video game adaptation of a blockbuster film". On 3 November 2016, a third album titled Flash in the Pan, was teased on YouTube, and released on 11 November 2016. It was preceded by the single "Gemini". described by the NME as "a swirl of looped vocals, Pond-y synth work and dreamy, subtle bass". Watson explained that it was "the first song I recorded for the album, and probably the most immediate". It featured a contribution by Sergio Flores on saxophone. Watson currently resides in Beaconsfield, a suburb nearby to Fremantle in Perth, Western Australia.
Style
In 2014 Watson described his music as "it is basically quite rock’n’roll, indeed, but still it’s very electro music-inspired, all the instruments, even the guitars, are made through these MS20 synths". In an interview in 2018 he stated "I kind of just don’t really think about the kind of music I’m trying to make anymore... it kinda sounds really cliché but I kinda just do stuff and then whatever it is, it is."
