Static Jacks – In Blue
Fearless Records
-out now
2 / 5

This just in: the sophomore LP from Westfield, NJ rock quintet Static Jacks is more entertaining on their album cover than in their actual album. Why must we be so cruel? Let’s face it: you’re money is worth time, and when you spend forty minutes and fifteen bucks on a bland album like In Blue, now you know you’ve gotten hit twice. It’s not awful and the end of the world, it’s just the kind of album that leaves no impression upon us. It is not blue, or red, or even green; it is simply monochromatic, it is either playing or it’s not, and there’s not much difference either way.

“Horror Story,” the opener, comes in and leaves like a ghost. And we don’t believe in ghosts. By the time we get to “Katie Said” for the third time, it’s clear that the Jacks’ repertoire includes a handful of power chords, lyrics that might as well be toneless humming, and turning the amp up to eight – certainly not eleven. As badly as the band wants to be “it” (and they try all the tricks in the book), we’ve got to point out that the bands that stick rewrite the book. Sure, they’ve got “I’ll Come Back,” but as their strongest song, we can’t find anything special about it. It sounds nice… move on. The rest of the album goes below par – not in the golf sense – especially in terms of songwriting. Like we said: we listened to this one a few times, and after each listen, there was never any reason to go back. Back to Typhoon instead!

A disappointing album, like that child who you knew was never going to be anything special and – lo and behold – turned out that way. Maybe there was a chance somewhere along the way… oh well. Send this one to the unemployment line and find a better way to spend your time.
(Gosh, we’re cruel aren’t we?) Take a pass.

Check out “I’ll Come Back” on Soundcloud.

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