Customer Reviews

Perfecting Loneliness

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Before I review this album, I would like to preface the review: Yes, I am only giving this album three stars. I do this in an effort to allow consumers to make educated choices, and not purchase albums that they might dislike because positive reviews are over-represented on amazon. I understand that rating an album less than 5 stars opens me up to being plagued by "not helpful" ratings for this review, but I feel that it is important that people be able to make informed choices.

That being said, Perfecting Loneliness is a perfectly ok album. It's completely enjoyable, it has a pleasant sound to it, and yes, in today's emo-friendly music world, it's commercially viable. But it's underniably worse than the band's master-peice debut album Orange Rhyming Dictionary, which had better songs and better arrangments. This album tries to avoid the pitfalls of the band's follow up to Orange Rhyming Dictionary, the mellower Four Cornered Night, by opening with a few strong, driving pop rock numbers ("The Frequency," "You're the one I want"). These songs succeed on only the most basic level. The problem with them is that their talented singer, Blake, never gets to rock out. The Frequency builds to the point where Blake should be screaming and shouting the final chorus, but instead the feeble proction merely settles for distorting his vocals and placing them higher in the mix. I'm sorry, but you can't fake rocking out with studio gimmics, you have to actually rock out.

Ultimately the album drags, and Blakes conversational lyrics are hit or miss (they have a tendency to fall back on very obvious rhymes, a habit that one might find particularly abrasive.) Likewise, we live in a wonderful time musically when artists like Bright Eyes and Cursive can seemlessly incorporate instruments like cellos into their sound, which makes the keyboard orchestration on this album sound corny.

Will fans of Jawbreaker like this album? Probably not, this isn't the same Blake that you knew before.
Will fans of Jets To Brazil like this album? Yes, it's a return to the sound on the band's first album, and even though it's not as impressive, it's still enjoyable.
Will fans of emo music like this album? Yeah, this is easily as good as something like the Promise Ring or anything else on Jade Tree.
Will fans of the rock rivival like this album? Lord no, it doesn't rock.
Will fans of challenging, complex music like this album? Nope, there's nothing innovative about this.
Do I like the album? Yeah, it's ok... but given it's flaws and general mediocrity I couldn't possibly recommend it, and I really don't want any body to purchase the album based on false hype only to be disappointed.

The opening track, "The Frequency," is an immediate stand-out, with impressive similies such as "always writing against this truth / in the way that a painter must have a surface to hit" and it is followed by "You're the One I Want," perhaps one of the catchiest songs ever scripted by Blake.

As the album progresses, the songs begin to slow down, although there are a few other amazing ballads, like the title track, Perfecting Loneliness. "Wish List" is an up-beat but quiet song, with entertaining conversational lyrics.

The slow songs are best summarized by the song Psalm: a slow, melancholy, introspective piece, with lyrics such as "God is dumb / God is great / but does He love us all the same? / are we ok?" Maybe not your thing, but dismissing these words as trite or uninspired would be offensive to their pure and contemplative nature.

Finally, the record closes with some increase of volume, and songs like "Autumn Walker" and "William Tell Override" take advantage of simplistic rhymes which coordinate themselves cleanly with the punch of the songs (when I took it to the man / he said "We're doing all we can" / he shook my hand). These songs are followed by the closing "Rocket Boy," an enigmatic song about a young man living half a life.

In conclusion, this is an excellent new album from Jets to Brazil. The songs fit together cohesively but, at the same time, I do find a few of the slow failing to distinguish themselves during my listens. Furthermore, the lyrics are once again good, but not as blatantly impressive as Blake has written in the past. Some of these lyrics are less aimed at dazzling the listener and more aimed at provoking thought. Overall, I would certainly recommend this album to any patient listener. I give it a full rating of 5, although I must state that it's no Orange Rhyming Dictionary (it's not trying to be) and, although drawing comparisons might be wrong, this album does not approach Orange Rhyming Dictionary on my list of favorites.

Jets to Brazil's third album "Perfecting Loneliness," plays like a sonic photo album full of conflicted love songs. "The band's on hold / cuz your shoulders make me cold," sings frontman Blake Schwarzenbach on the record's second cut, "You're the One I Want." On following tracks he states, "in the long black eternity / I loved you so perfectly," "the milk of kindness is behind us now," "it's beautiful and sad / but it's all that I have," and "I'm gonna make a record / so I never forget / what I wrecked."

The band behind him plays perfectly through the quieter, acoustic and piano driven lullabies like "Further North," into the rollicking, sardonically upbeat "William Tell Override." They steal riffs from Oasis and the Guess Who (Psalm, William Tell) and reggae-punk beats from the clash (Perfecting Loneliness) without losing their identities.

Jets even addresses their own cult/fame status, forking songs like "The Frequency" ("all the city kids / the angry with-it kids / hate everything") with the title track, ("the radio is playing our tune / I love it could you turn it down?") and the politically bent "Disgrace" (no one's rocking the boat and some kids here say they wanna dance"). Nor is religion ("God is dumb / God is great / but does he love us all the same?") or the presidency ("they put a monkey in the white house / and his uncle in the movies") spared.

But romantic issues are still at the forefront here, and the music reflects that. The band evokes the better moments of Buffalo Tom and Cracker now much more than they do an indie rock super group. "I came this close to being me," sings Schwarzenbach on the album's closer, the gorgeous Lennonesque "Rocket Boy." Jets to Brazil no longer sound like the sum of their formidable parts, but rather they are their own beast now, "perfecting loneliness / till nothing's holding us," they sing, "we could be the first."

This album, like the first two Jets to Brazil albums takes more than one listen to really get into. That said, after a few listens it really grows on you and if you like catchy music you'll love it.
This album's style is sort of a mix between Orane Rhyming Dictionary and Four Cornered Night, it has those fast paced rock songs with interesting wordplay and rhythms from ORD and the cheesier, simpler, and softer pop songs from Four Cornered Nights.
A lot of people didn't like Four Cornered Night, I loved it. I thought the move in more of a pop direction was great.
This album fixes most of the serious flaws that that album had. The biggest one being the louder songs weren't all that good or even original sounding. These thankfully sound more like Jets to Brazil then bad Green Day. Unfortunately the album still closes out with a terribly over-emotional song with laughably bad lyrics.
But all in all if you liked Jets to Brazil before you'll love this one even more. This band doesn't really doesn't remind of many emo bands except for maybe some the Promise Ring. They actually remind more of the Old 97's and Fountains of Wayne than most emo bands these days.

Who hasn't dreamed about the perfect love scenerio, felt lonely, coveted someone they simply could not have, driven alone on a blustery night wishing she had a destination? Once again Jets has produced an album with melodic overtures, comprehensive, realistic lyrics and serene artwork. A true masterpiece. More similar to Orange Rhyming Dictionary than Four-Cornered Night, which I think is a good thing...

First of all, I want to say that this is the first JTB album I ever listened to. I didn't know what to expect when I first heard them. All I knew is that some of they guys in the band were memember of Jawbreaker, which is considered to be one of the first emo bands. That said, I had very low expectations. I pictured some sort of little-known Dashboard Confessional clone. Luckily, I was in for a pleasant surprise - JTB is nothing like that at all! The cd starts out with what I consider to be one of the best songs on the album, "The Frequency." This is probably the fastest song on the album, and it mellows out from their, eventually ending with "Rocket Boy," a rather long but beautiful closing to the album. All of the songs are outstanding, and as far as I'm concerned, this is one of the best albums I've ever heard. The music is very mellow, so as a fan of bands like the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Less Than Jake, it really surprised me how easy it was for me to get into this. After the second listen, I was hooked. It's hard for me to come up with something to compare this to. Perhaps the best I can come up with would be some of the mellower Incubus songs, like "Mexico" and "I Miss You." Even that's probably not an acurrate picture. Just try listening to Amazon's samples and see what you think. Because this cd is just amazing.

This album, like the first two Jets to Brazil albums takes more than one listen to really get into. That said, after a few listens it really grows on you and if you like catchy music you'll love it.
This album's style is sort of a mix between Orane Rhyming Dictionary and Four Cornered Night, it has those fast paced rock songs with interesting wordplay and rhythms from ORD and the cheesier, simpler, and softer pop songs from Four Cornered Nights.
A lot of people didn't like Four Cornered Night, I loved it. I thought the move in more of a pop direction was great.
This album fixes most of the serious flaws that that album had. The biggest one being the louder songs weren't all that good or even original sounding. These thankfully sound more like Jets to Brazil then bad Green Day. Unfortunately the album still closes out with a terribly over-emotional song with laughably bad lyrics.
But all in all if you liked Jets to Brazil before you'll love this one even more. This band doesn't really doesn't remind of many emo bands except for maybe some the Promise Ring. They actually remind more of the Old 97's and Fountains of Wayne than most emo bands these days.

After falling in love with "Orange Rhyming Dictionary", I was disappointed with "4 Cornered Night." I was apprehensive to listen to "Perfecting Loneliness" for fear of being disappointed again. I was pleasantly surprised. It is definitely not "ORD" but that's okay. Their sound has matured into an absolute symphony with more intricate melodies than any other artist I have found. The extensive use of piano, cello and breakdowns within their songs have established their musical ability. Add Blake's somewhat cryptically personal lyrics to that and you have great songs. In my opinion, "'Rocket Boy', "Further North' and 'Wish List' are stand out tracks. Also, the CD is enhanced with footage of jtb in the studio. The album is definitely worth is for people with discriminating taste. If you're looking for good decent music, it doesn't get much better.

When Jets to Brazil released Four Cornered Night, many were taken by surprise, due to the album being much more mellow and melodic than its gritty absolutely rocking predescesor. Perhaps if Perfecting Lonliness was released inbetween, the transition would have been smoother, for this album is the perfect combination of the two.

Perfecting Lonliness requires a bit of patience from the listener. At first listen, the songs blend together and sound alike. But with each subsequent listen, I personally am finding myself loving the album more and more.

The first song that grabbed my interest is Wish List, a song that is more Four Cornered Night than Orange Rhyming Dictionary. The lyrics are amusing to anyone familiar with criticism's of Blake's work ("Some people say that I'm corny or I'm morbid/ I always thought I was touching I was tragic").

The other highlight in my opinion is the slow Lucky Charm, with it's quasi-sad semi-hopeful story and pleasent piano.

The album starts to rock towards the end with the two-punch of William Tell Override and the oddly Morning-New-Disease-esque Disgrace.

Lastly, Perfecting Lonliness comes with an enhanced portion of a video of JTP in the studio. Frankly, all it is is a video and an uninteresting one at that. This is best described as gravy- something added to an already great thing, so it's not going to detract from the goodness of the rest of the package.

All in all, this album should please any JtB fan as well as prove to be a good starting point for anyone interested.

If I didn't already have this album, I would have been mislead by the reviews so far (save for one). Don't get me wrong, I love JTB. I will buy everything they ever make, no matter what, but this is not a 5 star album! This is not a 5 star album standing alone or in comparison to FCN, or especially ORD.

For those of you who loved ORD, you'll find Blake's vocals are timid and hesitant on this album. The lyrics are unabmitious. If the album radiates with anything at all, it's just uncertainty. If you were hoping to that this album would recapture any of the momentum of ORD, abandon that notion completely before you purchase this album or you will be grossly disappointed.

If you thought FCN was better than ORD, then you might like this album a whole lot and think it's close to perfection. You might also think tofu and ice cubes make for great dessert.

This album lacks an cohesive theme, but is still more composed than FCN. Some of the better songs on this album are Cat Heaven and Wish List. My least favorite so far is The Frequency, a one minute song stretched into six. The other songs are not so memorable.

It really is, just an okay+ album, but certainly not close to perfection. The reviewer before mentioned that Blake has a tendency on this album to fall back on predictable prose, which one might find abrasive. This is probably most true because you expect so much more from Blake. You KNOW he's capable of the most ingenious of lyrics, and yet you're fed easy snack-sized bits like "when the measure of your worth is the measure of your work then you better make it work." Great if you like your music to be loaded with plays on words, but not so great if you're still starved for the poetry that was on ORD.

Overall, enjoy it for what is is, but don't go in with the misguided notion that this album is perfecting anything.