Jacob Ungerleider

Congratulations is a beautiful and bittersweet set of 12 songs that will crack your heart and your humor, that will blur the boundary between a smile and a frown, that will introduce you to a new bedroom pop auteur who wears a heart on his sleeve that might look a lot like yours. Though Ungerleider has released songs of his own before, both under his own name and to acclaim as Grebes, Jenn Wasner rightfully believed that he’d simply sit on these tunes as he went about his sideman business. She sorted through old demos and new numbers, arranging and compiling and producing, and even started her own label, 2 Heads, to release Congratulations. That’s because to hear these songs is to be smitten with them, even as they hold up a mirror to our most engrained insecurities.