Ours Returns With New Album, an Emotional Masterpiece

Ours, led by Bergen County resident Jimmy Gnecco, is playing a hometown show on Friday, Sept. 24, at the Debonair Music Hall in Teaneck. They’re riding the wave of their new, self-titled album released earlier this year. “Ours” is an emotive masterpiece, enthralling the listener with songs that feature hypnotic verses and huge choruses. Gnecco inspires with dramatic, intense vocal flourishes and introspective lyrics. His urgency, emotion and sincerity shine through.

Gnecco’s bandmates also impress, with slashing guitars, atmospheric keyboard touches and a solid bass-drum rhythm section holding down the fort. The album completes a trilogy of work that also includes the albums “Ballet the Boxer 1” and “New Age Heroine 2.”

Highlights on “Ours” include “Are You Listening,” with its yearning verses and anthemic chorus, “From Where You Are,” augmented by snyth-created strings, the atmospheric soundscapes of “Gold” and “Across the Clouds,” and the rousing “Echo.”

We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Jimmy Gnecco.

Q. Your new album offers much for the listener. The emotional heft, the sincerity in the music and lyrics, your vocals at turns yearning, urgent, and triumphant. Ours is also very original in what you do. Not many bands come to mind.

A. I’m happy that that comes across because that’s been what’s been important to me through the years. People try to put bands in a category so they can understand it but I’ve always been in my own lane. I take a lot of stock in that. I never wanted Ours to be a b-version of another band. On this record we fully occupy the space that we want to. We’re influenced by so much music, from classical to the Doors to Queen to Bowie to Bjork.

Q. It’s been three years since your last album. “Ours” contains 17 songs, which is a lot of music. Is this a combination of songs that were written pre-pandemic and during the pandemic?

A. Everything was pre-pandemic for the most part. The last song that just got in was “Gold,” which was worked on both before and during the pandemic. I just kept pushing to finish it because something was missing. That was completing the song “Gold, the spark that inspired this entire pursuit.

Q. “Ours” completes a trilogy begun by the albums “Ballet the Boxer 1” and “New Age Heroine II.” What ties the three albums together?

A. I think it’s a story of somebody’s personal journey through different chapters of life and getting to a place of evolution. “Ballet the Boxer” is my own journey through childhood and growing up. As a small kid I wasn’t very masculine and was picked on a real lot and had to stand up for myself. I found music made me start to be more graceful and embracing more diplomatic solutions. I could channel my anger into something that was more beautiful. I was basically a fighter in that sense.

“New Age Heroine 2” is the next chapter of change when you’re in your twenties and things aren’t necessarily the way you thought they’d be. It’s that time for a huge change when you get away and grow and discover things. Awareness of extreme loss and sadness at the same time. It gets really personal for me.

With the new album, the final chapter of it all would be the story of somebody overcoming lots of obstacles in life and growing and getting to this space. This is how I overcame it. It is a triumph of the human spirit in the face of so many obstacles and tragedy and heartbreak.