Customer Reviews

No Such Place

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Think Dylan slide guitar with a steady slow blues style and a spectacular vocal harmony keeping the groove. When I search for new music, I preview the 7th song, and I was blown away by Bound to Forget.

Listening to the rest of the album, I'd call it melodic harmonic southern blues drive mix rock, were that a genre.

I can't believe this hasn't been reviewed yet. Great music.

Jim White's first album "Wrong Eyed Jesus" was by far one of the best releases of the last decade. Fresh, original, haunting...it was an unexpected album from an unexpected artist. So, I've waited four years(!) for something new from Mr. White, and here it is. "No Such Place" has already leapfrogged ahead of WEJ on my favorites list and deservedly so. Taking his influence from many trance and groove artists and producers, Jim has crafted a truly amazing record that sounds like the future of music made from a recipe of traditional Americana and roots music of the past. More haunting and original than ever, this is an absolute stunner. I've had the pleasure of meeting Jim and seeing him live a few times, even interviewing him, and all I can say is "Thank _____ for Jim White," an artist who restores my faith in music in this dull musical landscape.

I bought this album about 4 years ago.
I STILL listen to it on a regular basis.
It quickly became one of my favorite CDs.
Now Jim White's documentary, SEARCHING FOR THE WRONG EYED JESUS, has become one of my favorite movies.
http://www.searchingforthewrongeyedjesus.com/
It is difficult to catagorize the "type" of music this cd offers, but I think the first sentence in Amazon's editorial review does a good job of summing it all up:
"If Jim Carroll, Barry Gifford, and David Lynch all decided to put on a show called Lost Highway: The Musical, or if Lou Reed and Neil Young were to score Sling Blade II, they might come up with something that sounds like No Such Place."
If you like trippy music with profound lyrics that make you think, this cd is for you.
High quality production values set in the studio make this superb ear candy for the stoners out there looking for comraderie in a lonely world of self centered angst and bleary eyed, intellectual ennui.
And check out the movie, too.

I bought this CD when it first came out in 2001 and sat back and waited for the accolades. They never came. It is one probably one of the most underated CD's in history. The music is quirky and strange, and immediately strking and impressive. But the greatness of this CD are the lyric driven themes of Jim White. I can't imagine anyone not being blown away by this fine work

Jim White, no relation, is as an eccentric, innovative, and refreshing new artist as we've heard in a while. He, along with a small contigent of talented producers, appears to have invented a new musical hybrid-- a combination of 'country' and so-called 'trip-hop' (itself a hybrid), which we shall hereby dub 'countryp-hop'(unless someone has beaten us to it or found a better name). White writes songs that bear a melodic resemblance to country music. Then he bends them lyrically and sonically into beautifully warped gems. To get what we mean, you need only to listen to his one cover. It is a version of "King of the Road", a road where Roger Miller collides with Tom Waits. Although this no longer makes it Top Ten material, it is every bit as catchy and much more provocative than Miller's original. The instruments employed on the album-- kalimba, melodium, celeste, toy flute, sitar, etc--are not the usual array for country music. And when the 'usual' are used--dobro, banjo, mandolin, etc--it is in a totally new and imaginative way. Now some of this is just a tad too strange for these ears to 'get', but we may just keep hitting "repeat" until we do.

Two albums that I've been listening to through the past six months that have had particular lasting value include Califone's "Roomsound" and this one, Jim White's "No Such Place." Both seem to touch a deep chord with the myth of the vast open American country, the roads and the mountains and the cornfields, and the unique people that popular the nooks and crannies of this nation. These are people that wear an archetypal mask, and one might say they are joined with their story so well one can't tell if what you see is a mask, or their true face.

In this music, the context is the story of America, its dark and beautiful dream.

Jim White's music first appeared during the second half of the 90's, born, it would seem, out of a subculture of calculated weirdness. With this second offering, I would have to argue that this guy is the real thing.

But there's more to White's music than the protracted mental agony and sensibly twisted visions that permeate it. Three of the songs, this time, "Handcuffed to a Fence...", "10 Miles to Go on...", and "A King of the Road" would all do well on the AAA circuit. "Corvair" is a low key rendering that maintains the kind of fragile beauty that one hears on an early Neil Young album.

NO SUCH PLACE is more polished than WRONG EYED JESUS, making it apparent that the artist has improved his station in terms of access to a more upscale production team. Some of the songs remind one of Beck's country/funk, but White is more careful in his verbal phrasings, never allowing stream of consciousness to encroach on meaning.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

HANDCUFFED to a fence in Mississippi is not a usual place to begin an album. But then the last thing Jim White could be described is run of the mill. A former New York cab driver turned singer, his life fell apart after the release of his totally distinctive "One Eyed Jesus" debut. Happily now back on track, the string of producer credits hint that this was a tough album to make.

For the uninitiated, White is a very alternative country performer, combining modern effects with dark tales of Southern madness and religion. Some of the material here is heaven sent. For example White invests Corvair, a lullaby for a disused car, with all the sadness in the world. At his best, White's lyrics are miniature short stories to rival those of Southern writer Flannery O'Connor.

It does lose its way in the middle, but if you like adventurous roots music, you really should search this out.

I read the capasle review of this album in Time magazine and got intrigued. Jim White is terrific and this album has more wonderful Southern weirdness. It's a little bit more polished and the lyrics are more comprehensible than on Mr. White's first album "Wrong Eyed Jesus". My favorite song on this album is "10 Miles to Go on 9 Mile Road" which is all about just moving through life and doing it well and with love or else "you'll wind up cynical or dead". "The Wound that Never Heals" is a wonderful tale of a women that kills her husbands to escape the ghosts of her 5 dead uncles. "Christmas Day" is haunting tune about lost love. "Bound to Forget" is another great song. "God Was Drunk When He Made Me" is a great song about religion and other disasters. This is a wonderful album no matter where your musical tastes lie.

No Such Place is a fantastic CD from beginning to end. I have heard it at least couple hundred times and I haven't come closer to getting board. Every track is solid and sticks to the theme of the CD, which as Jim told me, is about a group of characters of which some fail and some succeed. There is no question that the CD is a story of up and downs and music and the lyrics take you on a long journey.

I first saw Jim play live in 1997 on David Byrne's Feeling tour and from that moment on we were hooked. It started with Wrong Eyed Jesus, a great CD, and now 4 years later NSP. NSP has a similar feel, but it is better produced. If you haven't heard it, I suggest you do, I can't imagine someone hating this CD, it's just too original and restores your feelings about new music, which for the most part I think, like current movies, is unoriginal crap. I can't wait till he puts out another CD, according to Jim he wrote 70 songs for NSP, and if you get a chance to see him live, you'll hear a lot of them, it's not to be missed.