What is it with bass guitars and girls named Kim?
This Kim, one Miss Jade, is a NY based singer/bassist and this is her eponymous 8-track debut album.
Kim plays rock-oriented blues/soul too far from the fast lane, her songs invariably pedestrianised by their near permanent setting at mid-tempo pavement pace. Her lyrics suffer from a lack of…well, to be perfectly blunt…anything interesting to say and their predictability only makes the musical backdrop sound more laboured. On the road-trip ‘Drive’ for instance, she hints that ‘those were the crazy times’ but, rather than revealing a hot-rod, the chorus turns out to be flat-tyre: ‘We would just drive, wasting time’.
‘It’s Gotta Be You’ has some decent chord progressions in the chorus and the verse structure is a bit tighter. Her best moment is the penultimate track ‘This Is Your Time’. Throughout the album her voice has lacked real connection with the music she plays. On ‘This Is Your Time’ she opts for a breezier, poppier sound; this renders the style much fresher and gives her voice a platform. The use of backing singers adds some zip, and by pushing the standard rock/blues template to the margins of the song she gains vital contrast in tempo and arrangement.
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On the whole everything is too polite and the album lacks any killer tunes or hooks. While the backing band is competent, no-one is really breaking into a sweat over this, and so there is nothing distinctive to be heard in the mix. If she can break herself away from the bus-lane of the blues and encourage her pop inclinations, she’ll find she can move up a gear.
Until then I’ll keep Miss Deal and Miss Gordon in the CD changer.
www.kimjade.com
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