News of Jeff Klein’s then-upcoming Let’s Be Enemies had filtered through the internet in tantalisingly-slow drips. News snippets, short song clips and a welcome freebie in the form of a song entitled Sleepwalking had all appeared during the wee small hours of various nights, all followed up by the announcement that something else was due to happen instead – a solo venture entitled The Posthumous Jeff Klein and a band effort named Jerusalem, with ‘My’ added at a later date.
An introduction to the band via Youtube followed soon after, along with a couple more glimpses into the band’s work. After all these teasers, by the time that the EP finally surfaced last year, people were more than ready for it.
Perhaps the biggest charm of this EP is that, over the course of its five tracks, it contains more invention and willingness to embrace a variety of styles than most other artists struggle to achieve in a career. It opens with the emotionally full-on Sweet Chariot that brings every member of the band to the fore, followed by an equally uptempo but much brighter Under Your Skin, which reminds me of my favourite New Order song Temptation in tempo and feel. The mood is then brought right down for the dark lullaby that is Heroin(e) and melancholy Turtledove before ending on a joyously upbeat note with Remember Everything.
This release works on so many levels – soundwise it’s both very tight in execution and very personable in production which gives the recording an infectious sense of enjoyment, it’s a great introduction to the band and what they are about, and it’s an outstanding collection of songs. This is a bit of a short entry as I try to type these things out as I’m listening to them, and as it’s only five tracks I’m running out of time – which is why I shall probably never get round to reviewing Nuclear Assault’s Good Times Bad Times, as although it’s classified as a mini-LP due to the number of tracks, it’s only about four minutes long and it takes me that just to get started…
Erm. Where was I? Oh yes – new EP (the aforementioned Sleepwalking, at last!) out soon, LP hopefully shortly afterwards. For more info, visit the band here.
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