“If you want to play it smart / you’ve got to dumb it down,” Burke Ingraffia sings on Jazz Animals, and that sentiment looms over the album. “Checks and Balances” is an extended riff on the language of finance as he sings about how small his bankroll is, while “Dreaming in Code” examines how thoroughly his job writing computer code has infiltrated his life. They work to varying degrees. “Dreaming in Code” is a little forced, and when he sings, “I am soil” in “Soil,” it almost feels like he’s challenging himself to see if there’s anything he can’t write a song about.
These thoughts are set to lovely, spare jazz pop and are brought to life by Ingraffia’s voice. It’s sweet, gentle and best when put in service of less topical songs. His unhurried phrasing suits “Lazy Bones” and the swinging “People Come, People Go.” In those cases, he makes commonplace thoughts seem significant and poetic. Ingraffia closes the album with Stephen Foster’s “Oh Susanna,” and he nails the song’s simple elegance, letting his chromatic harmonica come in on occasion to add a wistful accent. Foster’s song and his performance and his performance of it speaks to the smart/dumb problem, though, demonstrating that “simple” and “dumb” are not the same thing.
