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"Block, a power-folkie
with heart" - Newsday
| Review: All Music Guide - June, 2007 |
| Joe's Pub Release Party , NY - June, 2007 |
| The Gothamist, NY - May 23, 2007 |
| Ginsburg; Avenue A - April 13, 2007 |
| The Mint, LA - April, 2007 |
| PASTE - April 02, 2007 |
| Album of the Week - March 14, 2007 |
| MTV - June, 1999 |
| Florida Today - Feb 12, 1999 |
| Boston Globe - Jan 6, 1999, Boston, MA |
| Yeah - Jan, 1999 |
| Spin - Jan, 1999 |
| Faze 3 - Dec, 1998 |
| Diversions Music - Nov 19, 1998 |
| Potomac News - Nov 12, 1998, Woodbridge, VA |
| Daily News - Nov 3, 1998, NY |
| The Review - Oct 1998, Washington DC |
| Timeout - Oct 29, 1998, NY |
| Buffalo News - Oct 26, 1998, Buffalo, NY |
| CMJ New Music Report - Oct 19, 1998 |
| Philadelphia Daily
News - Oct 9, 1998 |
| Mosaic - Oct 6, 1998, (U. of Delaware) |
| Philadelphia Weekly - Oct 7, 1998 |
| New York Magazine- Oct 5, 1998, NY |
| Press - Sep 27, 1998, Atlantic City, NJ |
| Daily Freeman - Sep 18, 1998 Kingston, NY |
| Billboard - Sep 5, 1998 |
| Buzz Weekly - Feb 13-19, 1998, LA |
| Music Connection - Feb 2-15, 1998, West Coast |
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| "Lead Me Not Into Penn Station" Press |
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MTV
Block
Timing is Everything
(Java/Capitol)
On his major label debut, Jamie Block mines the seemingly inexhaustible vein of
urban malaise until it's pretty much spent. The New York singer-songwriter recorded
the 13 tracks contained here in various studios, basements, living rooms and kitchens,
and his piecemeal methodology lends the work a fractured, scattered sensibility that
sounds like it's somehow just escaped from the ass-end of a black hole into the already-rotting
21st Century. Timing, as they say, is everything.
Beginning with "3rd Mall From the Sun," Block establishes his lounge
lizard persona -- just one of several guises -- backed by cheesy plastic organ and
a strip-joint snare. "The house is filled with lawyers," he groggily growls,
"sleeping bags are filled, with refrigerated salesmen and hundred dollar bills
. . . and everyone talks like Lindsey, and everyone talks like John, here on the
third mall from the sun."
Life isn't any better in "I Call Her Vicious," which begins with a Nirvana-like
guitar slash and an almost angry snarl before segueing into a track that sounds like
it's from a badly-dubbed video of "Queen of Outer Space." "(She) took
me, a nothing, it really isn't hard. I tell my friends I'm sleeping with a star,"
he forlornly croaks, his desperation matched only by his self loathing.
"I-95," on the other hand, is almost tender in its regret as Block leaves
his lover to fend for herself, hitchhiking on the side of the highway. "When
I came in here, saucer-eyed and yearning, I had no way of knowing, it was you who
was turning. And I owe you something I won't give away, I owe you nothing I got nothing
to say." Block's lover becomes a ghost in his rear-view mirror, one who'll never
disappear.
Elsewhere Block insists "The Pink House Must Burn" to a catchy, clicking
rhythm track and explains that the "happy combination" of "cigarettes,
Prozac & Scotch" supposedly helped him get over his Southern Californian
girlfriend, even though he gripes "I even wrote this song for you, a lot of
good that'll do." But in his flat out funniest song, he tells the listener in
his faux-Latin lounge lizard best, "I Used To Manage PM Dawn."
"I do not think a regular CD cover will work for you," he instructs
some bent memory, "We should fly you guys to . . . Iceland! And do a picture
on a . . . glacier! Just write it off, take it as a loss, it's no big deal. Actually
it's on you. No loss. Here's some papers, a contract, it's all standard."
Jamie Block is the first artist to appear on Java, the label started by Glen Ballard,
who produced Alanis Morissette. Ballard is obviously of a certain ear. Like Morissette,
Block is far, far from the norm, which right there gives him a leg up, and
there's enough creative energy and originality here to make his music worth returning
to.
In a vacuous universe, Block's timing is dead-on.
--Tom Phalen
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