Current Band Members
Jessie Jacobson
Jarrett Lesko
Brian Bielski
Mike Murray
Our Story
Second Language formed in Los Angeles in 1981. Alternative rock with multiple influences including post-punk & new wave.
In 1985, Second Language recorded an album’s worth of new songs as their calling card to the music business. The band (Jessie Jacobson, Toni Zeto, Jerome Faulkner, Jarrett Lesko & Brian Bielski) asked Earle Mankey (ex-Sparks) to co-produce the 15 tracks. ‘Words Into Action’ seemed like the most commercial and universal song of the bunch. Producer Tony Berg heard and loved it and offered to go with the band and Earle back into the studio (Cherokee in West Hollywood) and coaxed some superb vocal performances out of Toni and Jessie and helped arrange the bridge to the standard of the rest of the song. The result is the first in a series of Second Language archival and contemporary stereo & Atmos single releases on Alternator Records, mixed by Michael James in 2023. These will be followed by archival and contemporary album releases on GO2L Records in 2024.
Press
Second Language seamlessly transgresses from one rock genre to another, serving up bite-sized pieces of the larger underground musical landscape and cultural zeitgeist. They are the Talking Heads one minute, Radiohead the next, and then they're Siouxsie and the Banshees by way of Blur.
— Steven Alan Green
Second Language might be described as the Jefferson Airplane meets Jim Morrison, backed by Talking Heads. Male and female lead vocals intertwine over a thumping beat, with droning guitar and keyboards. Psychedelic, man! And, in fact, pretty entertaining. The singers are attractive, and reasonably facile at what they do, and there’s plenty of contrast between the gloomy male vocals and the woman’s; the sound alternates between Grace Slick and what you’d expect to be wailed from a minaret at sunset than from a stage at Sunset and Wilcox.
— LA Times
Second Language opened last Thursday's evening at the Lingerie with another homage to the '60s, albeit with a bit more contempo flavor of the X-Talking Heads style. Lead vocalist Toni Zeto most strongly suggests Grace Slick's aggressive style, from the "Old' days, and the abundant use of exotic and quirky percussion, combined with an '80s keyboards style makes for an inventive, and quite distinctive, melange of textures.
— Variety
