Which is a very bloated way of saying that yeah, this Jesse Malin fella. The Duke is something of a motherfucking fan, is what. Sorry about the longevity of the windedness, folks. It's all the "passion" and what-not.
So, Jesse Malin's second album arrives, and The Duke salivates at the very thought of it.
When I put Fine Art… in the player for the first time, I was blown away. The focus of it all, the stripped back nature that allowed those amazing yet deceptively simple melodies to soar around the room, chiselling themselves into The Duke's brain half-way through the first listen, it was a stunning record is the point to be made.
The Heat, however, plays a different game. It's a sneaky motherfucker, is what, trying to make The Duke look stupid and ignorant and other words Michael Jackson uses a lot these days.
When I first listened, I was disappointed. What have you done, Jesse Malin? Why the murkiness? Why go and murk up something which needs no murk, which needs, in fact, to be spotless, to be standing proud and not hid behind excessive studio tinkering?
I was all apathetic and so on.
So I sat down and put it on again. And then those melodies, those amazing choruses that I had mourned, it turned out they were there all that time. Playing hard to get, those choruses were. Like when someone gives you their friend's mobile number instead of their own. They still wanna talk to you, otherwise they'd just give you one they made up right there at the bar, or, more likely, tell you to fuck off. But they want you to work for that conversation, man. You don't get no lovin' with that kind of lackadaisical approach.
So The Heat made The Duke work for those rewards, and thank fuck, man.
First time I heard The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips I thought, yeah, it's alright I guess, very intelligent. Good for you. Now where's my other records, the ones with tunes that don't try to get all smart-arse on me.
Six months later I put that album back on for some reason, and it was like a totally different record. Slowly, through some kind of diabolical evil, this thing had metamorphosed from an interesting but unlovable "student-record", to being just about the most glorious pop album anyone could imagine.
Article comments
1 - Dave Mason
I had a similar thing with The Soft Bulletin. If you've not heard it, you should give The Sun Brothers eponymous album a try - it's got a similar type of sound only it's kind of frustrated and English too.
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Dave, thanks for the comments. I'll keep an eye open for the record what you reccomend.
Thanks, man.