Jesse Malin at ULU

Jesse Malin at ULU

21 July, 2008
by: Evolmike

As a nation, we've always had a curious ambivalence to American culture. We like to think that musically, we're a lot older and wiser. Yet under our breath, we reluctantly admit that there has to be something they know that we don't. And then we remember how much they like country & western music.

It's not just their charts that are full of it; it's in their bars, their streets and their porches. Over here, there isn't really an equivalent genre that is so dominant in pop music. Perhaps that's why I've never taken a shine to it. I'd like to say that Jesse Malin falls into more than just this category, but as far as my knowledge of mainstream country & western goes, he doesn't, despite the influences of (and decision to cover songs by) the likes of Neil Young and the Ramones. He just about eeks into rock & roll in the soft stadium sense, but in the same way that soft rock and hard country have been teetering on the edge of each other since the ‘50s without evolving much.

He sings quite literally slack-jawed, and his voice is the very definition of twangy. He can somehow pop his face on an M or an N, and manages to turn every vowel into a huge, triangular diphthong. Even his speaking voice is a bizarre cavalcade of intonation, somewhere between Elvis Presley and Disco Stu. It's actually kind of entertaining, in an annoying way. (Welcome to the age of viral marketing) At times his sound is (very) reminiscent of the feel-good musings of Bruce Springsteen, despite their almost polarized differences in voice. Alas, The Boss couldn't be there to perform their duet 'Broken Radio' which is hardly surprising. It's a bit of an enigma to think of how he was ever on board in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, Jesse is good at what he does. There's little doubt of that. But what he does is country & western. It's a genre in which there is no call whatsoever for technical showmanship, so the trick is in finding a narrative balance between sympathy and apathy that can be related to by a maximum demographic. In this context, for all I know he could be a clever guy. The music is pretty enough to lose yourself in, at the expense of not being particularly engaging. So for the background of a party, it's ideal. But if you like your music to have at least a spark of originality, it may not be for you.

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Evolmike