J.A.C.K.
Deletist
Yab Yum Records
By Jose Fritz
Oh J.A.C.K., thou art my cudgel, my cleaver and scythe. The other records of my inbox are dust and dead grass under your passing shadow. Two years ago I called your demo The Impossible Sound genius. I said it and I damn well meant it —even knowing that the word set a high bar for the future. Genius is such a brutal adjective. It imbues an expectation of greatness, past greatness, present greatness and future greatness. For a band, there is no backing out of that gracefully. To see and hear that word so early in a bands career is a burden, a death sentence if they fail to achieve it. After that word, for J.A.C.K. there is only greatness or there is nothing.
In that pursuit, Deletist revisits a song from that first demo. They re-recorded “Suicide Man” and slowed it down two notches. They shake the earth, clapping and stomping inside the windowless clapboard church hollering from the hymnal. The slower pace really elevates the layers of vocals proving what seemed implausible before; that Scott Holland sang it all. The words “Please Lord won’t you kill me?” are hollered and shaken like snakes in his fists before the congregation. Hello greatness my old friend.
The album is not a jubilee; it is not gospel. The approach to “Suicide Man” is raw drama, an interpretive dance made to prove a point. They really are good enough to get away with that. Excepting the one familiar song, Deletist is starkly different than Impossible Sound. The new record is still thick with gutbucket riffing, pound on the dashboard riffing. What’s new are the dual guitar harmonies. I loved the last album for its garage rock dirtiness, I was very surprised to hear some of the songs on the Deletist were …pretty.
The opening song “Dracula” takes a solid 1:20 to get to the first word of the first bar — into the meat of the song. The amps make a roaring wind noise and guitarist JP Gilbert plays a few gentle chords building slowly then in the stanza gradually changes his attack on the strings to add pinch harmonics to the riff. It might be art, he might just be showing off. At the same time Scott is doing his best to channel the Teutonic Udo Dirkschneider so either would be appropriate. Udo was best known for being four-feet tall and wearing camouflage. Holland one ups that by wearing more eye make-up than Lou Reed and wearing blood stains. I think I just wet myself.
They are worshippers of rock or metal, of glam and gloom. They worship rock like music critics are supposed to worship rock. I recognize them not only as fodder but as peers, as brethren. Like Muse they have a mastered the expansive crescendo, and the soaring operatic vocal. The song “Rainbow Blood” contains the single slowest greatest gear shift I’ve ever heard. It starts with a sparse, choppy arrangement and while Scott’s growling about “pigfuckers” the bands layering contrasting major chords building into a five-and-a-half minute psychedelic mess.
It all brings me back to that demo. It was great and appropriately short. A good band can prove that they are limited trying to overreach too soon. J.A.C.K. wasn’t waiting. JACK lay in wait. They waited not because they were unable to act; they waited because they wanted to drawn you in close, where you’d be more vulnerable, unable to defend yourself when they struck. A song like “Whorse” at a distance might have only stunned you, leaving you wide-eyed and twitching in the grass. But up close, between the speaker cabinets, that’s the kill zone, that’s where they wanted us all along.
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