Jump has always been a band that has found
it’s way into the slipstream of Marillion.
Heralding none other than Marillion’s keyboardplayer Mark Kelly
producing their album “The myth of independence” and having been opening
act for Rothery and C°, the strength of Jump mainly can be found in their
live shows. For these kind of bands it’s often damn difficult to capture
that live energy on a studio album but this time around I think they have
finally succeeded. Well, the opening chords from ‘Millionaire’ certainly
illustrate this energy very well being based around a very funky guitar.
Also singer John Dexter Jones really demonstrates his versatile vocal skills
here making ‘Millionaire’ an instant live favourite. I have to be honest
here and confess that, in the beginning, I wasn’t too keen on John’s
voice yet over the years I have started to like it because John has the
ability to deliver kind of a different voice for the more rockin’ songs
and the more intimate ones. Parts of ‘Love song number five’ and
‘Bethesda’ do indeed sound very folky making it possible for John to
approach these songs in a different way, more storytelling, more in the vein
of Chris De Burgh if you like. That feel is even more accentuated once the
electric guitar stays out of the picture and all emphasis goes towards an
acoustic arrangement as happens during ‘Rise’. Jump has two guitarists in it’s ranks which
means that the keyboards are limited to the arrangement and all solo’s
come courtsey of one of our guitarist-friends. Because one doesn’t know
whether it’s Steve Hayes or Pete Davies performing we just have to refer
to them as being ‘the guitarist’. Slide guitar finds it’s way like a
snake throughout ‘Right winger’ with the sound of a cheap Farfisa organ
in the background. Again in ‘Wages of sin’ the acoustic guitar takes the
upperhand enabling the lyrics to be sung very clearly so the listener
perfectly knows what the story is all about. The energy of the beginning of
the album is re-injected by means of the swinging ‘Doctor spin’. One
piece of advice here : seeing the band consists of six individuals how come
none of the musicians share some backing vocals ? A song like ‘Doctor
spin’ could certainly benefit from some extra backing vocals in the chorus
which would give the song even more body and power. In the final song
‘Cruel to be kind’ I would have loved to hear both guitarists play
together so as to obtain the Wishbone Ash feel which would certainly have
fitted well here. Once again Jump have delivered a great
collection of songs and ideas and no doubt these will go down very well
during live gigs. However they still lack the kind of song(s) which will
lift them into the higher regions of the music business. So for the time
being it’s status quo what the endresult is concerned but my compliments
have to go towards producer Martin Atkinson (I kow you produced virtually
every single Jump release my friend but this time to my humble ears I hear a
difference !) who really captured the live vibe very well. Reviewed
by John ‘Bo Bo’ Bollenberg |
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