Jamie’s Brother
Down
Distinctions between subgenres of rock are often flimsy and artificial, but they usually boil down to choice of heroes: the Sex Pistols or Black Sabbath, Black Flag or A Flock of Seagulls, and on and on. But when Nirvana shattered underground rock’s commercial barriers in 1991, it also further blurred the lines between punk and metal, a lingering source of confusion which resulted in a band like Soundgarden winning Grammys in the Hard Rock category and looking sheepish about it.
Jamie’s Brother operates in a world where all such petty distinctions have evaporated, where loud guitars are loud guitars and categories mean nothing. On this 13-song, self-released collection, the Tempe quintet pulls out nearly every proven rock trick of the last three decades, from squealing wah-wah guitar solo to grinding jackhammer riffs, to dramatic distortion-pedal dynamics, to odd-interval harmonies that have Alice in Chains written all over them.
Singer Jeff Harmon has a powerful, gutsy voice, and his band’s kitchen-sink approach works best on hard, propulsive rockers like “21” (even if you question its “Life begins at 21” chorus) and “Wasted.” He bends his notes in a positively Kurt Cobainish fashion on the album’s best song, the fiery “Lies.” Unfortunately, some of the other tracks (“Nelly’s,” “Down”) fall into a kind of generic-rock muddle, sounding like mere sums of their jumbled influences.
If much of the band’s material sounds like a DNA splice of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Soundgarden, the contemplative “Angie” seals the deal, delivering a virtual rewrite of “Hunger Strike” by Temple of the Dog (a Pearl Jam-Soundgarden side project). But if Jamie’s Brother gets its best ideas from other bands, Down confirms that at least it executes those ideas expertly.
–Gilbert Garcia