My Jerusalem - Preachers

  by Dave Goodwin

published: 13 / 11 / 2012

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I listened to this album first as I usually do, travelling around in my car. Now what I usually do next is put it back in its case, take it into the house and listen to it again a few more times. Somehow this one was different. On the way home the car deviated to the local shop where I bought a nice bottle of red wine. My suggestion to you is to do exactly the same. In fact it should be printed on the already beautifully packaged CD cover. This one I thought deserves a little more attention whilst enjoying some appropriate relaxation processes. 'Preachers' is the second full-length release from Austin's My Jerusalem. It was recorded in under three weeks with the help of Spoon drummer Jim Eno at his own Public Hi-Fi studio. It is the follow-up to 2010's critically acclaimed debut, 'Gone for Good', which earned the band airplay on BBC 6Music and on the iTunes Weekly Rewind. The band describes the album as post-modern Southern Gothic soul, and adds that the songs were carefully born from organic live performances which Eno carefully captured and then tweaked. For those who don't know, My Jerusalem are a five piece multi-instrumentalist band which includes founder Jeff Klein formerly of Gutter Twins/Twilight Singers, guitarist John Merz, Michael St. Claire, drummer Grant Van Amburgh and bassist Gina Spigarelli. ‘Preachers’ starts off with the title track, which begins with a sort of haunting air raid sound that melts into the backing vocals. Klein shows off his rocker-style baritone voice to good effect as the piano/keyboards tinkle away mingling with spooky baselines. So it's time to open that bottle of wine and just pour a little, and take a sit down again as we drift in to the brilliance of the spooky 'Shatter Together'. "I'll be your mirror we can shatter together," sings Klein. It is a moody and atmospheric number that starts to make your body move unconsciously in the settee as the wine begins to flow a little easier. ‘Born in the Belly’ is a harder more intense offering. Now your feet are tapping away in time as your head nods. There are some lovely marmalade-sounding guitars drifting way in the back of this one, mixing with some lovely marmalade harmonies and seemingly turning the wine to sherry. Time for another sip of that wine as we drift in to ‘Mono’. This is another lovely warming trip so make sure the glass is full up with this one as Klein woos his woman. You're going to get woken up for a brief time now so put your glass down and have a quick shuffle with ‘This Time’ as we enter the middle part of the album. My suggestion now is to settle back and give the primal Billy Idol-sounding ‘Death Valley’ a listen. There are some haunting backing vocals coupled with a pounding drum line that will keep you nestling for around about four minutes until it's time for a refill. For me this is where the album steps up another level. Over six minutes of National-style melancholic brilliance comes next with ‘Devoe’. Searching, emotionally begging and crashing, it leads us into the almost desperate ‘Between Space’.”Under your microscope/You drop harder in life/With a razor from your coat/You carry all the time/Just in case someday you give up on life and love,” sings Klein, his last ditch loneliness descending into blissful sorrow. Put your glass and down quick, while you totally rock out headshaking to another Idol-esque number, ‘Oh Little Sister’. Now this is the time to fill up the glass and take in a serious eleven minutes of musical brilliance. The haunting guitar and the background piano that drift us gently into ‘Chameleon’ gradually send us morbidly and strangely into the humane. With the aid of some mesmerizing brass work towards the end, we drift on into ‘I Left My Conscience in You’. "Wake up, wake up now/And darling we getting too old for games like you." Klein again floats us on a violin-laden dreamboat to somewhere morose and sad as that guitar kicks in again, but just as you're getting used to it, like an explosion, the rest of the band blast in. I found myself lost in a session of air drumming and headshaking, bearing in mind that the bottle was now almost empty! ‘Preachers’ is a darker record than ‘Gone for Good’, but it also has a new focus and a strutting swagger which is as Klein says "both beautiful and comforting." There are a few CDs I have listened to this year that are into double-figure plays on the iPod, and this is brilliant, nearly an hour's worth, of irresistible moody and atmospheric songs, and is one of them. Especially when listened to with a bottle of red wine!

Track Listing:-

1 Preachers
2 Shatter Together
3 Born In The Belly
4 Mono
5 This Time
6 Death Valley
7 Devoe
8 Between Space
9 Oh Little Sister
10 Chameleon
11 I Left My Conscience In You

Band Links:-

https://www.instagram.com/myjerusalem/
https://www.facebook.com/myjerusalem
https://twitter.com/myjerusalem
http://www.thisismyjerusalem.com/
https://vimeo.com/user5391533
https://www.youtube.com/user/MyJerusalemVEVO

Label Links:-

http://www.theendrecords.com/
https://www.facebook.com/theendrecords
https://twitter.com/theend
https://www.youtube.com/user/theendrecords

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