BACK TO THE SKY
Jacanda
review by J.C. Hartley
Jacanda is a Bristol based combo fronted by Chris Pritchett formerly of The Bottle, Amber, and Minerva, playing an acoustically melodic jazz-folk-rock, described as 'classic' by various bizzy organs, in the style of Neil Finn and Crowded House.
It's fine and dandy and the ideal accompaniment to a nice game of Uno, or for chilling on a potentially stressful motorway drive, but little of it sticks beyond that. There's a striking, if inappropriate image in the first song, "ghost of a smile," everything being in lower case to emphasise the modesty of their pretensions one assumes, something about 'origami', well that bit stuck anyway, but that sums up the overall effect unfortunately. Pleasant but samey songs punctuated by James Phillips sax solos, with a - oh, it's finished then? after 10 tracks.
If you like unchallenging, well crafted, mature songwriting this is for you; I'm sorry to be downbeat but you take on a review on the basis of a few minutes of downloads, when the CD arrives you have to hope there's light and shade; apparently there's a song about Darfur, 'roundabout', I'm afraid I hadn't noticed.
