Jets To Brazil
Four Cornered Night
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Jets To Brazil
Four Cornered Night
Jade Tree, 2000
RiYL: Jawbreaker, Electric Light Orchestra, Cracker, Wilco |
Freed from Jawbreaker's occasionally stirring power-trio charge, Schwarzenbach is here revealed as the empty-headed lousy poet I always took him for. Over musical backing that sounds like a poor man's Cracker, Blake gives us little nuggets like "Little light tonight / I don't like being right" and my personal favorite, "I am the rabbit wrapped in panic actor." Many of the lyrics seem to be selected merely because they rhyme, e.g. "I've changed my mind so many times / I'm a strobe light."
Um, okay.
Musicwise, no one would ever suffer a seizure from Jets To Brazil who wouldn't break into convulsions listening to the Electric Light Orchestra. The concept is the rough-and-ready, workmanlike model of the hard-touring '60s bands. The compact disc is even decorated as to look like an old Decca LP. "Pale New Dawn" and "One Summer Last Fall" have punchy little guitars, block piano chords, and simple structure that don't as much revisit Highway 61 as crawl around it on hands and knees, looking for one bit of genuine creative inspiration.
The trouble is that JTB singularly lack the sort of charismatic, essential tunesmith needed to give the band's rude gestures transcendence. If you really need to hear contemporary indie rock figures doing the Basement Tapes, go find that Crust Brothers LP, where Steve Malkmus and Silkworm do it far more elegantly.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.