Jim Clements - Kill Devil Hills

  by Daniel Cressey

published: 18 / 5 / 2005

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Jim Clements' 'Kill Devil Hills' is another example of the maudlin singer/songwriter album, characterised by tracks where the singer either feels sorry for himself or for anyone who crosses his path. This is not intended as a negative as it is also a great album, but the four opening songs are wonderful, and they set a standard that the remainder just fail to live up to. Clear standout ‘Before the Beating Starts’ comes on like Alanis Morrissetee’s ‘Ironic’, if that had been written by Nick Cave and sung by Damien Rice. In it Clements relates how, in a cruel twist of fate, he met his true love three days late, when she’d already found another lover, one “so much like me he could be my brother”. He continues to mull over how to win her, with “a few choice words, perhaps a murder”. Track four, ‘Fletcher Christen’ is also brilliant and ‘Coming Up Roses’ is a suitably bitter love song from a man clearly used to being bitter. The album, however, does loose its way latterly. Although Clements’s voice is very pleasant - and his songwriting equally good –over production and slight similarity between tracks conspire to make the listener begin to loose interest. An excess of instrumentation becomes slightly wearing and many of the songs seem unwilling to step too far outside of traditional motifs. For this reason you can become over familiar with them quite quickly. 'Kill Devil Hills' does only loose its way slightly though. This is a wonderfully pleasant listen. It’s full of catchy, well structured and downright great songs. If it fails to live up to all it leads us to expect, it is only because it has set the bar of expectation so high.

Track Listing:-

1 Coming up Roses
2 Before the Beating Starts
3 Fletcher Christian
4 Wendy Darling
5 I've Always Been Faithful
6 So Much Confetti
7 Strangest Places
8 After the Flood
9 The Volcano Song
10 Another Sky

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