Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 00:06:16 -0800 From: "Gil Gershman (GuerillaG)" (gman2@SPRYNET.COM) Subject: Re: JACK -- the band On Tue, 5 Nov 1996, lorelei tremolor wrote: >jack are new on too pure, they have one album out and an ep that has great >song on it called "wintercomessummer" that kind of reminds me of the fall- >it's got mark e. smith-esque speaking during the verse and then some >smithy (as in the smiths) la las for the chorus. try ***FOUR*** EPs: Kid Stardust/I Didn't Mean It Marie (7" only - PURE49) Wintercomessummer (PURE52) Hey!... Josephine I Was Drunk in the Underworld White Jazz (PURE53) The Ballad of Misery and Heaven Ballad for a Beautiful Blonde Eye ? Biography of a First Son (PURE59) For Luna The Seventh Day Kid Stardust >at times they remind me of moose- hence the band name... at other times i >think they get kind of cheesy... MOOSE?! i just realized that many might not have seen AP#99... so here's my review: JACK Pioneer Soundtracks You are Jack. So many of your fellow British bands want to be romantic glampunk mods or Beatles, so you decide to fall back on more esoteric influences. You dust off a Walker Brothers album, dig out your Echo and the Bunnymen LPs, and cock an ear to what the Tindersticks are doing. A smash single results, catapulting you into the Next Big Thing limelight. Dispirited critics are delighted to hear someone worshipping at the shrines of Saints McCullough and Engel instead of at those of Saints Lennon and McCartney. They shower your pedestrian efforts with ludicrous accolades, and you find yourself signed to once-hot-as-a-griddlecake indie, Too Pure Records. Somehow you've roped legendary producer, Peter Walsh, into shaping your pretentious drivel and recruited a miniature chamber-orchestra of strings and keyboards. You release a series of lackluster EPs, regurgitating the same tired ideas over and over. The time for your debut album arrives, and you still haven't had another idea to equal your initial 45rpm paean to Charles "Kid Stardust" Bukowski. You distract attention from your maudlin lyrics and suspiciously Cave-ornous talk-singing by smothering your inispid songs in schmaltzy violins and besotted histrionics. Your second memorable moment, the hedonist anthem, "Wintercomessummer," is crushed under eight exercises in empty dramatic posturing. Critics wise up to your charade and realize what it is that Scott Walker/Engel has and that you woefully lack: Talent. (Too Pure/American) [1] <--- outta '5', folks. go and find Scott Walker's flawed but INFINITELY better _Til The Band Comes In_ instead. MOOSE ?!?!?! bite yr tongue! GuerillaG / gman II Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 12:09:27 +0000 From: Andrew Norman (nja@LEICESTER.AC.UK) Subject: Re: JACK -- the band lorelei tremolor wrote on Tue, 5 Nov 1996 (Subject: Re: JACK -- the band) > jack are new on too pure, they have one album out and an ep that > has great song on it called "wintercomessummer" that kind of > reminds me of the fall- it's got mark e. smith-esque speaking > during the verse and then some smithy (as in the smiths) la las for > the chorus. > > at times they remind me of moose- hence the band name... at other > times i think they get kind of cheesy... The Blue Aeroplanes, but Welsh and not half as good - or so I thought till I bought the album. There's a lush, romantic, melodic side to Jack which the Aeroplanes don't have, and Anthony Reynolds can sing pretty well (unlike Gerard Langley). Produced mainly by Peter Walsh, who has been responsible for Scott Walker's last couple of albums, and there are definite echoes of early SW - the glamourising of seedy twilight life, the overblown orchestrated bits which stay just on the right side of camp. There have been four singles - "Kid Stardust" sold out on 7" only in the week of release (but both songs were on later releases too), and "Wintercomessummer", "White Jazz" and "Biography of a First Son" all have non-album songs. I'm not at all sure about the Fall comparison - "Wintercomessummer" is Jack's most blatant Blue Aeroplanes rip-off, even down to the declaiming poetic style. And like Langley, Reynolds is a pretentious idiot who talks a load of bollocks, but fronts a great band. Talking of Scott Walker, his fifth solo album "Til the Band Comes In" has been rereleased on CD in the UK in the last month or so, and is (mostly) superb - a suite of songs describing the inhabitants of a shabby boarding house, plus four or five dodgy covers (and one good one, "It's Over"). I had heard some of this album on the "Boy Child" compilation, and the rest of his self-penned numbers are every bit as good. Some American company has just released a compilation taken from those five solo albums, see www.razorandtie.com for details. If you like Julian Cope's early stuff (great new album, but he's firmly into hippy-kraut-pop nowadays), Marc Almond or (from what little I have heard) Brendan-from-Dead-Can-Dance's solo songs, you really should investigate Scott Walker - start with the early stuff though, not "Tilt" or "Climate of Hunter". -- Andrew Norman, Leicester, England nja@le.ac.uk