Album Review : Jeremy Jay - Splash
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
Blink and you'll miss it – this isn't a particularly long album. Unfortunately for him Jeremy Jay's third long playing effort, Splash, is pleasant enough but not particularly memorable either. Dozing off to it is not an impossibility.
The tone across the nine tracks is one of Scott Walker-goes-Indie (a feeling borne out by the mac clad troubador photographed in what looks like a Parisian park on the album's cover). Musically Jay attempts to create a sustained sense of urgency throughout (the album's title track is probably the best example of this) but more often than not the songs deteriorate into repetitiveness and lyrically he's nothing special.
'Just Dial My Number', the first single to be lifted from this release, is a case in point. Whilst it starts off brightly enough with a nice bit of chirpy piano and robust drumming the failure to develop the tune beyond those two elements means that the instrumental break in the song's middle is a drag and after the last verse is sung the ending is overly long. You can though see why whomever he's desperate to speak with hasn't picked up the 'phone in a while.
By the time the songs 'Hologram Feather' and 'This Is Our Time', with it's lamentable claim to be riding a BMX and slight nod to The Smiths, you feel like putting the poor lad out of his misery. He can be really whiny when he puts his mind to it.
The art of the creative press release is well served by Splash's existence vis "Sounding like a sonic postcard reminiscent of early Pavement & "Evol" era Sonic Youth being played by Souxie Souix [sic]" – at no point during the chore of hearing this would you think of either Sonic Youth or Siouxsie And The Banshees. Fleetingly you might think of Pavement but most likely as something you would rather be listening to. In short this fails to even make so much as a ripple.
