Jim Campbell
Cynics Make The Best Friends EP
Cynics make the best friends eh? You better believe it! Personally speaking, if I find myself surrounded by a glut of cheery effervescent people (PR/Marketing types being the obvious example) the cynical gene kicks in daring me to somehow burst their reality-defying bubble and reduce them to tears. It’s a curse I know.
Jim, I suspect, has a not-too-different viewpoint on the matter judging by his lyrical content. ‘The Right Thing To Sing’ opens the EP and demonstrates the fact that Jim has a decent voice in him, as well as a healthy cynical streak. Unfortunately, musically the track needs work as the electronic drums jar and don’t quite seem in sync with everything else in places, while the high-end keys and middle piano just scream out for a guitar to add the punch to compliment Jim’s likeable vox.
Track two, ‘One for the Road’ just adds to my feeling that what this EP is crying out for is a producer who knows his stuff. The ideas are here, Jim’s vocal is decent, but the drums seem slightly pissed again and the instrumentation mix doesn’t compliment itself, sounding like the different elements are at war with each other rather then in the same army.
‘New Bohemia’ continues both the plusses and minuses but this time chucks in harmonica while supplying the foundations for quite a decent song – albeit one that sounds like a ’round the ole Johanna’ sing-a-long.
By the time I’m up to the closers ‘Bullshit Babie’ and (best of the bunch) ‘Dream On’, I’m starting to get the feeling this may have been the reaction Tom Waits must have got when he first started writing songs. It all sounds a bit of a mess arrangement-wise but there is a certain craziness in the lyrical composition and twisted melodies which is quite endearing.
Keep going Jim!
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Written by Habert on
