Review: Jebediah

Jebediah
“of Someday Shambles”
(Big Wheel Recreation)

With a Johnny Cash flavored acoustic song (complete with horse neighs as the song closes) that sings the intention of building a, “A big beer wall” opening this disk, figuring where Jebediah was exactly coming from took on an air of curiosity.  But before the track officially ended, the true colors of Jebediah came strumming through.  The colors are those of clean, jangly guitars that get distortion from volume, and a slightly nasal but energetic singer.

Guitars are good at finding little picking rhythms to intertwine among the pounded down strokes and distorted vocals that Jebediah likes to use as their “loud” dynamic.  The singers got a little work to do, but his charisma carries a lot of his dullish whine.

For a newer band, they’ve got a good handle on progression and melody without washing it out, but maintain a certain level of predictability while working within a safe groundwork laid before them pulls some of the charm off.  Enjoyable, but hits a rut within the first few songs.  A couple of recording approaches spice up the delivery and breaks apart the routine.  When Jebediah go for the easy hook, they take on an almost Lit like mentality (which loses points in my book, but if you like your guitar pop that shallow, by all means…)

Redeeming track is the loud buzz of, “Trapdoor”  (I think, there is some definite confusion on track listings on my advance) in which the singer pushes his personality in the vocals and the pulse of the song has some gusto.  The following track, “Please Leave” almost completely changed my mind about Jebediah.  Again, this track finds the singer in a subdued almost J.Mascis (Dinosaur Jr.) croak and the flow of the song is much tighter than most of the previous offerings here.  More of this and Jebediah will define themselves much better.  Although I doubt I’ll spin this much, I wouldn’t dismiss the Jebediah, and a future is there with some further exploration of their sound.