Review - Andrew Jackson Jihad's "Knife Man"

I like Andrew Jackson Jihad. A lot. I still like them but I did not like this album. It isn't that the musical style is different (it is), or that the lyrics go in a change of direction (they do). The faults of the album rest with the mixing.

So this is one of those reviews that brings the baggage of older stuff to the table, but I don't think it puts a bias on my view so much as helps me articulate it. Of course, they are MY biases, so what do I know?

See, in People who Eat People Are the Luckiest People in the World and Candy Cigarettes and Cap Guns the vocals are right up front and very clear. You can hear his voice crack and squeak very clearly. He sounds naked and honest and even as he explains and exemplifies his cowardice he has the bravery of a man with nothing to lose. I love that.

But here the vocals are treated with some kind of echoey gloss and down in the mix, losing all of that bravery I was hearing before. Which is sad because this album is much more self-exploratory (the others were self-aware, but not quite self-exploratory, more on that in a minute) than their other music, and would have benefiting greatly from that level of nakedness.

The emphasis isn't put on the instruments, either, despite there being a much larger composition behind most of the songs. There is no emphasis. It all just blurs together. The vocals dissipate and mix with the instrumentation, the instruments blur with each other, the whole scheme is lost. Is this new sound an attempt to be considered artistic?

Or maybe Andrew Jackson Jihad is hiding? I get the inkling of an impression that this is all some sort of meta-play, to give the impression that they are hiding, to tell us what the guy would like to do instead of putting anything out there in the open.

The idea of creating a sort of narrator that wants to hide, who doesn't like to get right up on the mic, is a brilliant idea, but it isn't pulled off well. I'm not sure how it could be pulled off well. More than any of that, though, I don't think that's what they are trying to do, I mean, just listen to this song from their new album played live:


God, I love that song. But I hate the official recording. It hurts to have to say it, but this album was boring.

With All Due Respect,
-Jacob Kincaid

First!

Just wanted to introduce this blog; give an idea of what we are going to be doing here.

But I don't really know what it is yet. I'd like you to take that journey with me.

I hope that was cheesy enough.

I'll be writing about a handful of on-going projects of an artistic nature - my band, my comic, my game - And any topics that come to mind. You'll find reviews, ramblings and musings of a highly theoretical nature. Short stories, videos, maybe even some poetry.

I have no clue what's going to happen here, but I hope this stuff will be intriguing to other people as well.

Until there's any real content up, you can check out my band. There's a link in the top right.

With All Due Respect,
-Jacob Kincaid