Review Summary: Jesu try to bore you into submission in 29 minutes.
I sit in my Calculus class as my teacher starts to pass out midterms. When I receive mine, I look at the first problem and mumble, "sh
it, I forget how to do linerization." Being a person who has always connected the dots with the help of music, I decide to discreetly pull out my iPod and fit one earbud into my ear for the sake of jumping my memory. Scrolling through the list of available options, the band Jesu becomes highlighted. "Sure, why not?" I thought as I put on their latest EP, "Why Are We Not Perfect?" The ambience immediately fills my ears, and alas, I remember how to do linearization, L(x)=f(a)+f'(a)(x-a)! With the music already jogging my memory, I decide to leave Jesu on. Things that I could not remember suddenly came to light. Newton's Method? Check. Mean Value Theorem? Check. But one thing became abundantly clear as time passed on, this EP is very tedious, repetitive and boring.
This highlight's my main problem with "Why Are We Not Perfect?", it drags out far too long for it's own good. Instead of the rhythm being slightly interesting, the same line loops throughout the whole song, for a good 6 minutes. It wouldn't be so bad if only one track was like this, but no, it's every track. Every track starts with a 30 second to 1 minute build up of a basic line, and then for the next 5 minutes or so, it repeats that line that was built up. Throughout the songs various noises are added to try and bring life to these songs, but they just end up getting caught in the infinite loop, and become just as repetitive. The vocals in Jesu can be compared to the vocals of
Sigur Ros in that the vocals only add another layer to music, instead of acting as separate entity. It usually adds a hint of beauty to the songs, but even in the long run, the vocals just get muddled in with everything else, even they become repetitive. It seems like Jesu was going for an ethereal sort of feeling with their songs, but got too caught up in trying to create this type of sound, that they forgot to add more to their songs.
The third and fourth tracks go by, still the same problem. "These songs would be much better if they weren't so long. If they could've just shortened the song length by 2 minutes, and maybe just added a few more songs for the time space they lost, this EP wouldn't drag out as much as it seems ." Track 5 comes on and with my iPod in my pocket. I didn't know the name of the current song quietly buzzing in my ears, just that it sounded familiar to something that was on not too long ago. I pull my iPod out of my pocket, and see that it's an alternate version of the title track. They basically took the track "Why Are We Not Perfect?" and decided to make it even more boring and uninteresting. Yet again, it's nothing special, with the same build up and then just add a few layers onto that formula.
It's truly a shame too. The first track seemed so interesting and in a sense, lively, but the EP just flew downhill so quickly. The songs don't seem to have much variation between each other, and in that, the songs themselves tend to be too long for their own good. And in the grand scheme of things, what good is an ep, or an album, if it doesn't even try to vary from itself, in sense, the artist(s) don't even vary their own music before trying to vary their music from everyone else.
