For Safety Town, the moniker of Chicago-based Jackson Davis, maturing through his 20s has been a series of experiments that seem to keep paying off. After graduating from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Davis finally had the time to attend to his production skills and release his first formal self produced release, 701 EP. Moving to the city, he started seeking other musicians to help perform his songs live, and found himself in stints performing with other local bands like Breether, Daydream Review, and Berta Bigtoe, honing in his chops as a multi-instrumentalist before discovering a deep interest in modular synthesizers. Davis credits the eclectic Chicago scene as keeping his focus on making his own music while pursuing a stable career.

Recalling the well-crafted synth-laden pop of the early aughts like The Postal Service, Fake It was finished in a pre-pandemic isolation without the need for a professional recording studio or auxiliary musicians (with outliers “Sunshine” which features live drums by Chicago local Jake Besen and Pink-Floyd-inflected electric guitar by Duncan Reilly of Cairns, who also contributes to the album’s title track). Davis doubled-down on refining his approach to making music during the lockdown by acquiring more analog gear and seeing what he could accomplish on his own. “I definitely do love being as DIY as I can possibly be,” says Davis.

This independent impulse allowed Davis to take his time, shaping Fake It through a series of experiments and slow-developing innovations in the way he worked out the music. “I feel like a lot of my music is the result of slowly learning how to produce things and piece things together,” he says.

Typically starting with drum beats and progressing until several sonic layers fold into a given song, Davis approaches songwriting and recording from a perspective that shares a great deal of overlap with his professional experience as a software engineer. Writing and production, then, blend together for Davis in a way that the final result is always a synthesis of ideas that have been built on top of one another -- a “trial and error” that gives only the impression of a seemingly-effortless result.

“I’m not writing direct code for the music, but coding and software are focused on functions and units of work that can accomplish something,” adds Davis. “The real work is how you tie them together -- it’s about the connectivity between elements.”

The title track is representative of many of the tracks on the record: softly sung vocals over layers of programmed beats and carefully composed synthesizers that swell and swoon. Other key tracks, like “Get Up,” are equally characteristic of the collection and it’s theme of maturing in uncertain circumstances.

If, for the most part, the sonic palette of Fake It sounds airy, upbeat, and soothing, it may surprise listeners to know that a good deal of anxiety and worry permeates the songs. “A lot of this album, to be honest, is about anxiety and navigating the future. I never took what I was doing that seriously and the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized how many other artists have felt that same confusion about what they do. That revelation was really liberating in learning to go with the flow and have fun with it.”

On Fake It’s closing track, “Only A Dream” (a song that begins with rhythmical, danceable loops recalling LCD Soundsystem and builds into a layered, synth-centric ambiance a la Washed Out), Davis offers some brutally honest, but wise words that seem both personal and universal after a year of locking down: “We’re alone and alive/It’s kind of surreal.”