MiniSky: Thoughts About Everything

I have been blasting the Love Jones album in my car all week contemplating exactly what to say about the band. I am left in such a quandary, a quagmire a complete dilemma that perhaps the cathartic influence of a blog post will help me through. So let’s get to it.

We wandered off to the Armchair on Saturday (as seems to be our ritual at the moment) to watch this exciting new band from Durban, Love Jones. I had heard a few mp3’s and obviously caught them on the High 5 @ 5 (sure whatever), but on Saturday night Love Jones blew me away. There is absolutely nothing wrong with watching Esjay (vocals) writhing around on stage, belting out rocks vocals like few frontmen/women in SA know how. She draws a great focal point for the band and the boys I was with sure as shit seemed to enjoy her. The rest of the band is a technically proficient collection of seasoned veterans. Stand out for me was the lead guitar of Peter Baybel (formerly Squeal among others), he gets very little scope to show off his skills but his clean guitar sound is always simmering just below the surface and when he does finally kick into a solo you know that he is the real anchor of the band. Mike Goddard previously of Perez bangs out a tight drum rhythm, and throws in some backing vocals to boot. Steve (Jones supposedly) rounds out their sound with some clean bass lines.

So I loved them Saturday, bought their CD and have been contemplative ever since, now it’s Thursday. Even while enjoying the live show there were a number of concerns that were jostling for attention in my already alcohol infused mind. Many of these were confirmed on listening to their album and many of which I am sure the band has heard before. Mostly, I feel that they are not doing enough with their sound. The band is talented as hell and they should be applying that talent to break down barriers, to make music that doesn’t sound like an amalgam of post 90’s rock. Their site claims that they have the rock stylings of the foo fighters mixed with accessible pop music. Why must we set the bar so low? Surely the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s or PJ Harvey could be better icons to aim for, and even then perhaps not reaching far enough.

Anyway that said their album is a well produced cleaned up version of the live show. A real credit to all those producers behind the scenes that continually prove that we can, and do manufacture really good recorded sound in this country. Please don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Another complete credit to the band is their aggressive marketing campaign. Online they are fantastic; wallpapers, music video, downloads, a nicely built myspace site and every other bell and whistle a band is expected to produce these days. On a final note, I think you will see a lot of this band, they are well produced and obviously well managed, their sound is going to appeal to a really broad audience (we have been joking that they are almost pre-packaged for 5fm) and the tunes they belt out are really good. I’m just not sure they are good enough.

Listen:

Love Jones - Kicks

Love Jones - Living

Love Jones - Take this advice

Music Video- Kicks

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