Title: Acid Tongue
Artiste: Jenny Lewis
Genre: Indie/Alt-Country
Familiarity: Zero
Recommended by: Justthefacts
Expectations: No idea. I assumed this would be another hip-hop artist. Interested now. Also quite interested to see the reaction if I don't like the album, as this is Justthefacts's first return since D'Angelogate...
1. Black sand: ooh! Really nice, dreamy voice. Good start. Kind of acoustic piano tune, swaying but with power. Kind of hear Kate Bush at times. Nice bit of violin there.
2. Pretty bird: Sort of a jazzy little number, slightly more uptempo and now I hear Beverly Craven. Nice guitar work. Like the sort of distortion
a la Chris Isaak (sure he's not the only one who does it, but he's the one who comes to my mind).
3. The next messiah: Hmm. I wonder is almost nine minutes going to be stretching it a little? Nice snarling guitar intro then a blues/boogie vibe as it takes off, good so far, and we haven't yet reached the first minute. Lot of Country in this. Hmm, that's odd. It's like it suddenly became two separate songs, the second sung by a male. And completely different. Not sure about this at all. No, that's just stupid. No wonder it's so long! I do like it, but it's getting a Red for the ridiculous double song here. And now it's going back into the original. Lord help us. That was inane on a massive scale.
4. Bad man's world: This though is very nice, and puts the weird and somewhat annoyed memory of the previous track behind us. I hear Judie Tzuke (yeah), and shots of ELO in the cello parts.
5. Acid tongue: Ah, acoustic guitar start, always good. Great backing vocals here, a super little ballad.
6. See Fernando: Oh I love the powerful slide guitar in this (is it slide guitar? Sounds like it. What do I know?) Hops along in a fine rocking vein. Like that a lot.
7. Godspeed: Almsot filching the melody from “A whiter shade of pale” here Jenny! Nice piano ballad though. Beautiful cello coming in on the third minute, and I like the lyrical idea.
8. Carpetbaggers: Geting back to the rocking in a kind of early Steve Earle vein to a degree, also elements of Nanci Griffith around maybe
Last of the True Believers era. Great guitar and some fine organ. Guest vocals from Elvis Costello are interesting. Do they duet? Yes they do, and quite well too. Interesting that the lyric uses the name of one of those
Dust Bowl Ballads from Woody Guthrie which I reviewed previously. Wonder if that was an intentional tip of the hat to the old folk legend?
9. Trying my best to love you: Beautiful gospel ballad, really showcases her voice.
10. Jack killed mom: Very honky-tonk piano opening. Changes considerably for the chorus. Nice. Could do without the spoken male vocal though. Total gospel freakout for the end.
11. Sing a song for them: Nice simple little piano tune with some good percussion and a rippling line running through it.
End result: A triumphant return indeed. JTF comes back out of the wilderness and delivers an album I can only love. It's a far cry from the hip-hop “opuses” we argued over, but I'm glad to see there's more to him than just that one genre. This was quite a revelation, and I'm glad I got a chance to hear it. Have to say, again based on the title and JTF's preferences as I understood them, I was not looking forward to it, but I'm glad to say I was wrong. Welcome back, man!
So, Love or Hate? This is a definite
Love.