The whole 'thespians wanting to be musicians' thing is an awkward one. Yes, there are some success stories such as hugely promising Americana performer Amy Studt who'd come to music from being a theatre manager and actress on the up, but usually we're forced to stomach acts as dreadful as Dogstar (Keanu Reeves) and Juliette & The Licks (Juliette Lewis, who still persists) simply because they feature Stars of the Silver Screen.
So you have to wonder what motivates an actor who's on the back of playing the counterpart to George Clooney in a European advertising campaign to turn to recording songs and releasing them through his own imprint. Which is, essentially, what JESSE MARCHANT is doing with his debut album 'Not Even In July'.
To be fair to Marchant, he's been dabbling with music a long time. He was a classically-trained guitarist by the tender age of 8 and during years of slogging in and around the celluloid scene in L.A during his early twenties he'd begun to write and record songs in his down time and make a point of working up his solo acoustic act. So, as anyone who's been on the end of heckling at an open mic knows, nuff respect is due.
The hard work has paid off for Marchant in that he's already completed a commission to score and perform the music to a new movie called 'Lovers In A Dangerous Time' which is about to do the rounds at the Film Festival circuit. It put him in touch with producer Henry Hirsch (Lenny Kravitz) and set the wheels in motion for Jesse to make 'Not Even In July'. So in many senses this debut is a good way ahead of yer average “It's self-released/ go to our MySpace” situation.
Ultimately, though, 'Not Even In July' will have to stand or fall away from the glare of the cameras and it's not an easy ride by any means. It's relentlessly introspective and if it's indicative of the work he's submitted for 'Lovers In Dangerous Time' it'll have to do a 'Good Will Hunting' to bring him Elliott Smith-style accolades.
Which isn't to say that 'Not Even In July' doesn't have its' moments, because it surely does, even if most of them are of the scarred, bruised and often utterly heartbroken variety. Its' author may have been living in Tinseltown while he penned most of these songs, but it sounds like he was frequenting a bar somewhere down on Skid Row and drinking neat whiskey with Mark Eitzel and Mark Kozelek rather than living it up with the Clooneys in Beverley Hills.
Nonetheless, 'Not Even In July' is by no means devoid of inspiration. Unfolding in slow motion with the (sorry, but it is) filmic instrumental 'Years', the album finds Marchant fighting the demons from the off with 'Cleo's Song' where he's alone with his rippling acoustic guitar and a ghostly choral vocal. He sings in a haunted and sonorous voice and his self-lacerating lyrics (“you'd give it all up for just a day of feeling fine”) may relentlessly bleak, yet they're all too credible where most of us are concerned.
|
From there on, the clouds rarely lift. Death is perpetually hanging around wearing shades and chewing gum on the corner and it's mostly a choice of whether Marchant will choose an acoustic guitar ('July On The Sound'), piano ('Red October') or something a little more exotic such as a Fender Rhodes ('Friends For Fireworks') as the rack to stretch his bleeding emotions upon. There is a full band sound fleshing things out at times, but even drummer Gabriel Montano's attempts to pick things up rhythmically sound stunted and incongruous rather than funky most of the time.
When he gets the haunted-but-beautiful ratio right ('Ambitions & War', the searing coda lifting 'July On The Sound'), Marchant demonstrates why he has persevered, but the album's overtly morose feel gets into your bones after a while and by the time the closing track 'Swallowing Daggers' can't decide whether it's suicidal or homicidal (“I thanked the morning for sharing your life/ I showed you reason, you showed me a knife”) you are running extremely short of patience and dying for either the kind of dumb-ass rocker American Music Club kept in reserve for such situations or for Marchant to simply open the curtains and let the sun in for once.
'Not Even In July' is a very mixed blessing. It covets moments of wracked, soul-searching beauty but to really immerse yourself you'll have to have a higher threshold for deathly confessionals than your reviewer has and bear in mind he listens to Messrs. Eitzel, Kozelek and Smith for pleasure on a regular basis. All things considered, keeping an eye on that lucrative day job and hanging on to George Clooney's phone number would seem the smart move at this juncture.
|
