The Inventions of Jerry Darge? ‘The Imitations of Jerry Dirge’, more like.
Truly, this is one of the most boring records I’ve heard in ages, and to stave off the tedium, more and more bad jokes like the one above keep popping into my mind. Q: What does a Deadhead say when he’s run out of dope? A: Jesus, this band is shit.
Well, IJD aren’t as bad as that, but listening to songs like ‘Jawbone City’ or ‘Riches in the Soil’ is like going for a nature walk in East Anglia: it’s not hideous, but it’s a flat, featureless landscape that seems to go on forever. A more recent reference point might be The Brian Jonestown Massacre, with both bands sharing a tendency towards exhausted country-rock tramping. Also, like the BJM, IJD’s singer is awful, struggling to hold a basic tune on ‘Jawbone City’, and sounding like a third-rate Mick Jagger impersonator for most of it. The song itself is a mechanical three chord vamp which occasionally switches time signature but can’t change its prevailing mood of time-stopped somnambulism.
‘Riches in the Soil’ has even less melody, with the vocals a barely-decipherable stream of whisky-induced mutterings, but it has a better structure, with the basic acoustic country rock stuff subverted by atonal harmonica quivers and a rather impressive electric guitar squall towards the end, but there’s little reason to revisit it. The title track boasts some nicely fried backing vocals but this desolate two-chord trudge is dreadfully dull, despite the addition of mandolins and cellos. No ‘wow’ factor, but plenty of ‘meh’ factor.
‘Wayfaring Stranger’ is the best song on the record, a spooky little ‘holy blues’ but, predictably, it’s a cover version, and the singer is clearly channelling Nick Cave just a mite too obviously. The other cover, ‘Cocaine Blues’ tries to come over all Lou Reed, but ends up sounding like a naughty schoolboy who’s nicked some sherbet from the tuck shop and now thinks of himself as Dulwich College’s baddest gangsta. The singing here is unlistenable.
I’ve got no particular beef with English acts playing American folk and country music, but they need to be bloody good-after all, the Americans have a whole industry devoted to developing and breaking their own acts. As foreigners, bands like The Epstein bring a touch of distance to the material, and this gives their brand of country rock its own flavour-they are not metaphorically dressing up as cowboys. Jerry Darge just seems to be about alternately imitating Cave, the Underground, the Dead etc., but they don’t have the songwriting or instrumental chops to render pretty tired material new. Not to end on a bummer, another joke: Two heads were discussing a recent show. “It was terrible, the mix was bad, Jerry forgot his lines, the playing was uninspired, it was torture to listen to,” said the first. The second added, “I agree, and it was too short, too”.