Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lost classic., February 25, 2002
It's hard to add much to what other reviewers here have already said.You know when you buy an album and you can tell after the first couple of plays which are the three or four 'good' songs (sometimes less !!) that are bound to be the singles? Not on 'Already', almost every single song is good enough to be a single, it's hard not to think that if this record had come out five or six years earlier it would have been massive ( it's better than JJ '91 album 'Doubt' ) but musical fashions change fast and the band were not considered 'hip' anymore by the time 'Already' was released.Thats a real shame, if you ever remotely liked JJ, take a chance on this record and I bet you'll think it's one of the best you've ever bought.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The case for technopoly (exhibit A), March 16, 1999
By A Customer
Although Jesus Jones's DOUBT was a happy, extroverted, sonically inventive album that easily overcame petty concerns like "didn't you use that same tune in three songs already?", songwriter Mike Edwards did understand that that trick only works in one-album doses. His immediate solution, for PERVERSE ('93), was to write no real melodies at all--- or maybe that's unfair, but after two discouraging listens with friends, I feel no impulse to spend my own time and money re-examining that impression. But take four more years off, and miracles can happen: ALREADY (finished within a year of Paul Westerberg's EVENTUALLY and Too Much Joy's FINALLY) sees Edwards with a whole new sheaf of simple but worthy tunes to hang songs on. The sounds and beats borrow a lot from Jesus Jones's "Machester Sound" past and from the less radical new developments in club dance sound. But Jesus Jones have long taken pride in their use of samplers to take weird sounds from their environment and shape them into something new; and by now, dang it, they've gotten real good, giving un-imitative mechanical buzzing to "Chemical #1" and (differently) "Motion", a shiny legato mutant-doorbell solo to "They're Out There", attractive bass chimera to part of "Rails", and possible revisionings of church organ for future virtual collectives of downloaded religious minds (especially "Wishing It Away", "Motion", "February").Attitudinally, the ALREADY/ FINALLY/ EVENTUALLY contrast says a lot about the respective bands, and "For A Moment" ("If I could be all that I want to be, the greats of this world would hang their heads in despair. If you could hear what I want you to hear, you'd think you couldn't breathe without that sound... Free for a moment high above, just for a moment I am in the arms of love") is just wonderful, as contagiously joyful a song as the synth-pop world has produced, closer to its "what I want you to hear" than Mike probably knows. Still, much of the optimistic burden is placed on the exciting, fast-moving, major-key music itself this album. The sidewinding rush of "Run On Empty" announces "the sky is falling down on you"; it places its faith in "I see declining empires fade away/ their games were getting ugly anyway", but 1998 is more a time of empire growing. And they know it: the sad "Wishing It Away", string section proud in its artificiality, says "Nothing is sacred, not life nor happiness, least of all the world we live in unless we make it pay". "Addiction, Obsession, and Me", an endorphin high from the beats-per-minute, goes "Drawn to a storm of things I have to have/ with patience, like other virtues, getting in the way... it's harder telling good from bad with your senses asking 'Was it good for you?'". The 12th, officially last, song is "February", with solo hymn singing, the "Itopia" keyboard sound (sad fake-choir), hollowly echoing percussion, and dark synth-marimba, in unsmiling accord with "The promises you break outweigh the ones you keep... you'd love to change the system but it works too well for you".But in the reductio ad absurdum of Nirvana's least healthy legacy, this album comes with 2 bonus tracks, helpfully listed on the cover and labelled "bonus tracks!", and with their own separate CD tracks; if only one had been named "Endful, Nameful", this could be a funeral for the right corpse. Anyway, "Together" crystallizes the album with a gorgeous, minor-key melody leading into an ecstatic chorus, and "Man On The Moon"'s hi-tech, sampled, gleaming dance beat steers the ambiguous "There's a man on the moon and he's not coming back, but he's thinking of you every time the world spins around" forcefully into anthem status. Smile, everybody! While you still can...
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stands tall amongst other Jesus Jones efforts, July 7, 2003
If you like the "Jesus Jones sound" (grungy electro-pop?) of Perverse, Doubt, and Liquidizer, then you will enjoy this album. I'm surprised no one here has mentioned it, but the track 'Top of the World' has to be one of THE best songs I have heard in 10 years, profound in its lyrics and construction. The album is worth it just for this one track. It's a statement on being on the brink of suicide, at which point does life become too hard to take? The rest of the songs on the song are strong, there is no song I skip over when listening to this CD, which is always a good sign. Solid!
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