ARTiST: I'm Not Jim
ALBUM: You Are All My People
BiTRATE: 177kbps avg
QUALiTY: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.97 Final / -V2 --vbr-new / 44.100Khz
LABEL: Bloodshot Records
GENRE: Indie
SiZE: 55.11 megs
PLAYTiME: 0h 41min 14sec total
RiP DATE: 2008-10-04
STORE DATE: 2008-09-26
Track List:
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01. Mr. October 2:56
02. Towtruck 2:04
03. After Mild Winter 2:21
04. Howard 1:38
05. Amanda Morning 3:23
06. Drink 'Til I'm Sober 4:24
07. The Pitchers Gave Up 2:47
08. Walks Into 3:58
09. Uncomplicated 3:06
10. Elevated Plane 3:44
11. Lonely Gains 3:52
12. Missing Persons 2:12
13. Meter Running In A Crashed Cab 1:24
14. Hoping For A Comeback 3:25
Release Notes:
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"[Some] songs have a gleaming hard edge...and elsewhere they've created crisp
little pop tunes with choruses that sound like forgotten hits from decades old
rock radio stations." Ken Tucker Fresh Air/NPR Radio
"Fascinating. 'Uncomplicated' sounds like an unlikely cross between Steve Earle,
Neutral Milk Hotel and the skewed pop at which Salas-Humara excels in his day
job." Toronto Star
"The songwriting reveals a collective mind steeped in rock 'n' roll verities.
'Uncomplicated' feels like an emergency water-landing engineered by a party of
drunks. And the brilliant 'Elevated Plane' gets I'm Not Jim up above the fray,
where they don't belong, celebrating the same old indecision with an assurance
that real life seldom demonstrates." Village Voice
"I'm Not Jim delivers songs that border on flat-out rock 'n' roll: the bluesy
and defiant 'Drink æTil I'm Sober'; the punchy, snarling 'Towtruck'; and the
Petty-esque sing-along 'Uncomplicated.' 'Elevated Plane,' meanwhile, is further
evidence that Salas-Humara's gift for producing grabby melodies with seemingly
little effort remains intact more than 20 years into his career." Blurt
Walter Salas-Humara and Jonathan Lethem met at a Silos gig in New Orleans.
Jonathan describes, "I'm a two-decade Silos fan, and have seen Walter play in
the various incarnations of his band eight or nine times over the years. When I
introduced myself to him it was in the interest of sending him a few of my
books, just as a token thank-you for his music. We got talking about writing
some songs together. I hardly thought Walter needed help in any sense; he's one
of the great American songwriters (see: "The Only Story I Tell", "Susan Across
The Ocean", "I'm Over You" and so many others...) but I was flattered at the
idea of supplying a Silos lyric or two. Walter, however, surprised me, and
delighted me, with the focus of his intent -- he wanted to write a whole album
with me, from the ground up, and to get outside his "Silos voice". We began
writing and the result was sort of explosive -- giddy pop songs and mournful
blues that came from their own strange angle, not quite like what either of us
expected."
Walter adds, "I loved Motherless Brooklyn, but after reading The Fortress Of
Solitude, a book I consider a stone cold masterpiece, I knew had to work with
Jonathan. We carved out a couple days and met at his house in Maine. I hoped we
would get a few things down and I was totally unprepared, and completely blown
away, by the speed in which Jonathan gets ideas on paper. We would discuss the
framework for a tune and he would be writing while we were talking. Then minutes
later he would have several verses with internal rhymes, a chorus and a bridge.
I was completely on the spot -û I now had to come up with melodies just as fast.
We ended up with eleven songs at the end of day two. We decided that the project
needed to be more than just an album of songs, and over the next week Jonathan
emailed me several spoken word pieces. I recorded these with just voice, and the
songs I recorded very bare bones, just voice, a single guitar and a simple drum
beat."
Jonathan continues, "The second act in the construction of I'm Not Jim was our
expansion from a collective of two into a collective of four (it's worth saying
we're not only "Not Jim", we're also "Not A Band", but rather some kind of
floating workshop or lab for making music -- Walter is our only public voice and
face, and I don't play any instruments). It happened because Walter thought The
Elegant Too (Philip Hernandez and Chris Maxwell) would be able to add some
distinctive production to the tracks he'd laid down. Of course it became much
more -- Chris and Phil warped and enriched the music so completely that halfway
through we realized we'd really entered a four-way collaboration. Not quite Mick
meeting Keith on a train platform with an armload of blues records, but perhaps
almost as fun." Walter concludes, "The Elegant Too took just my vocal tracks and
built the thing from the ground up. Sometimes they used the same chords and
beats I had played, but more often they subverted the melodies and juxtaposed
different chords and beats to create new combinations. It's a remix album
without having an original release. It's an original re-mix. Finally, by another
small world convergence, Jonathan is good buddies with one of my high school
classmates I hadn't seen in years, the painter Kent Matricardi, so it was
completely natural to enlist Kent to do the album artwork."
So what exactly do these song sound like? Lethem and HumaraÆs songwriting takes
the ordinary pop, folk, or blues song and makes it the occasion for what you
might call æserious playÆ û every lyric is grounded in emotion, but emotion
twisted by language and wit into something recognizeable but new. The melodies
that spring from WalterÆs voice fitting itself to these unexpected syllables
push the strength and warmth of his Silos work to a new range, sometimes
featuring a Dylanesque self-consciousness or humor, sometimes a Nick Drake
introspection. And when the skewed brilliance of the songs meets the
paisley-pop-electronic-remix chops of Maxwell and Hernandez û the Elegant Too û
the result always cuts against simple interpretation, pushing all the charm
toward menace, and the sorrow toward ecstasy.
"You Are All My People floats through a woozy middle ground between The Mountain
Goats' storytelling economy and art-pop's habit of letting convention loose with
the wind. Wandering through a forest of burned-out pop songwriting, folk
simplicity and avant-garde stretches, I'm Not Jim hangs together not from a
tightly built central idea, but by its ability to have so much fun playing
around." Aversion.com
"Salas-HumaraÆs vocals naturally evoke the minimalist rock of the Silos, but
Lethem gives the listener plenty to chew on: His lyrics turn edgy, enigmatic and
mournful, and the players respond in kind. While so many side projects seem
designed more for musicians than fans, IÆm Not Jim is a unique and winning
collaboration." Texas Monthly
"Strikingly literate tales told in an earthy, passionate voice and set to
stylish, expertly produced roots-rock." Toronto Sun