- -- Release information ----------------------------------------------- -- -
Artist : Jesu
Album : Everyday I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came
Genre : Rock
Year : 2013
Label : Avalance Recordings
Cat# : AREC027
Source : CDDA
Bitrate : 239Kbps
Size : 72,73 MB
Runtime : 42:50 min
URL : http://www.avalancheinc.co.uk/jesu.html
- -- Tracklist -------------------------------------------------------- -- -
01. Homesick 06:00
02. Comforter 07:12
03. Everyday I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came 07:35
04. The Great Leveller 17:28
05. Grey is the Colour 04:35
- -- Release notes ---------------------------------------------------- -- -
There are two bands called Jesu. One is a bedroom project that
mostly makes minimalist, experimental, drum-machine-backed EPs
and split singles. The other is a full rock band that makes
full rock albums, with drums provided by former Swans, Prong,
and Godflesh member Ted Parsons. Both are led by Justin
Broadrick-- co-founder of Napalm Death and Godflesh, as well
as numerous side projects. What ties both versions of Jesu
together is Broadrick's wide-angle vision: a melodic yet
abstracted amalgam of industrialized metal and time-lapse
shoegaze. Until now it's been pretty easy to know which Jesu
you were getting, simply by noting if the release in question
were an EP or an album. But on Jesu's fifth full-length,
Everyday I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came, that
distinction is not so strict. Neither is Broadrick's normally
high standard.
Clocking in at five songs, Everyday I Get Closer is the
skimpiest Jesu full-length to date (not counting the single-
cut, fifty-minute Infinity from 2009, which is neither EP fish
nor album fowl). The tracks vary greatly in span, but beyond
that there's not as much of a dynamic as on prior Jesu full-
lengths. Granted, Jesu has long been one of those great,
every-song-sounds-the-same kind of endeavors, although a
deeper immersion in any given Jesu disc reveals rich degrees
of emotional engagement and layers of textured ambience. On
top of that, Broadrick has been turning into a stunning
singer-songwriter, a kind of British Mark Eitzel buried under
metric tons of celestial distortion. Few of these strengths
are in abundance on Everyday I Get Closer. On "Homesick",
Broadrick's trademark use of descending chord progressions is
executed in his sleep, as is the Swervedriver-ish swirl and
chiming counterpoint. There's an afterimage of longing that
haunts the song, but it never clicks into focus. Nor does the
17-minute, would-be saga that is "The Great Leveller", which
drifts from movement to movement-- piano-laced intro,
planetoid riffs, antigravity interludes, the low-cycle hum of
synthesized melancholy-- in an anticlimactic meander.
That's not to say Everyday I Get Closer is a bust. Even when
treading water, it walks on air. The ambient lead-in to
"Comforter" seeps like a ruptured cloud into atmospheric
passages of oscillating noise, tectonic bass, and a collage of
reverberating vocal samples. When Broadrick steps out from
behind his shimmering, digitized curtain to lend his angelic
deadpan to the song's sad churn, it morphs from a lullaby to a
lament. His voice is even more vulnerable on "Everyday", where
pounding rhythms-- reminiscent of Hymns-era Godflesh,
Broadrick's bridge into Jesu-- tether a gradual escalation of
stratified guitar and interstellar pinging. It doesn't come
close to the orchestral sprawl of "The Great Leveller", but
it's stronger because of its conciseness, not to mention a
much-needed display of self-humanization in which Broadrick
lets his lungs hang out.
And then he goes and recuses himself-- or at least his vocal
presence-- from the halfhearted instrumental closer "Grey is
the Color". An angular, space-punctured approach to slowcore
that imagines Codeine gone kosmische, it's an emptily
pleasant, mildly numbing wisp of filler. It's also the only
thing Broadrick leaves the listener holding. It shouldn't make
a difference whether a release is called an album or an EP--
only in Jesu's case, each new album is a rare event that
crystallizes the aching, creeping progress Broadrock makes
between EPs. Despite its respectable length, Everyday I Get
Closer is not one of those events. Instead it drifts in
listless circles, waiting maybe too patiently for the other,
mightier Jesu to come along.
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