Jim White
(Luaka Bop)
Jim White's gothic lyrics belie an affable and genial persona that thankfully comes to the front on this live EP. The stage banter injects levity into an album that otherwise would flail under the weight of White's darkly dour sentiments. "Mother's milk is dandy when you're a little baby/As the wheel's are turned, you get grounded down/ you get a taste for that stranger candy," he sings on the opener, "Stranger Candy." It's a cautionary tale about the perils of growing up, painting childhood as treacherous trek into bleak adulthood.
White jokes to the crowd, "This is what I do, this is really sad, I'll win your love and then I'll stab you, I've done it all my life." This distillation of his artistic mission is telling in that the whole EP acts as the perfect primer on Jim White. There his literate, dark humor, the pessimistic stories, and the feeling of dark clouds permanently on the horizon.
And yet there is still a bit of light. White's melodies bring a sense of tempered hope built out of experience. Album centerpiece "Counting Numbers in The Air" is a hopeful love song, with a Jack Johnson-esque vibe filtered through White's own version of ragged romance. White's frayed edges keep the song from veering into overwrought sentimentality. On "Jim 3:16," Jim White sings, "A bar is just a church where they serve beer," and as the crowd sings along, you realize that Jim White's gothic witticisms detail a world where success and disappointment exist in tandem, and it is nearly impossible to tell one from the other.
STANDOUT TRACKS: "Jim 3:16," "Stranger Candy" BRIAN CREECH
