Annoying radio-friendly pop like the dreadful anthem "The Middle" replaced the heartfelt "Table For Glasses" of their previous effort and frankly, it was just too much for me to take. I had, after all, gotten myself all worked up expecting a continuation of where Clarity left-off - the stellar experimentation that was the 16-minute "Goodbye Sky Harbour."

Of course, JEW, which one reviewer once commented should be called "Jimmy Eat Sh**" in a one-sentence punk rock zine review, hadn't done much to impress prior with a couple of albums, one less horrid than the prior but still not anything their present label is in a hurry to re-press. Still, I had hope that "Futures" would at least resemble some return to form or introduce some new angle or approach that would keep JEW ahead of the learning curve.

It's definitely not found in the title track, which opens the record. Chunky guitars and anthemic "hey nows" just don't do it for me. Neither do the repeated "oohs" in the might as well be on Bleed American "Just Tonight."

"Work" shows signs of improvement, but it's haunting reference to the DJ playing the slowest song for last only brings back to mind their song on Clarity calling for a radio revolution to "take back the radio" and "let selection kill the old." Okay, so they are singing about a different kind of DJ, but seriously what happened to the revolution? I guess when you can't beat the Clear Channels of the world, you simply join them.

By the time "Drugs Or Me" rolls around, I've just about had it with the disc. A six and a half piano ballad that is depressing compared to the preceding hey-now-chunk-chunk,-yeah-yeah-chunk, but refreshing all the same, it's a reminder that this band with a religious acronym does still have skills.

Unfortunately, it's late in the affair to salvage the disc as a whole, but worth putting on the iPod for nostalgic shameless Clarity fans like myself. When Jim Adkins sings "I can't tell you from the drugs," it all comes back - those fabulous live shows I caught back when the band still played small bars, those nights listening to the band while I studied in my dorm room in college. "Polaris" continues to impress with an introspective heart on the sleeve, "You say that love goes anywhere, in your darkest time it's just enough to know it's there."

Things go experimental with "Night Drive," the song your DARE officer warned you about - "pour us a road, we'll both drink and drive." It's not particularly memorable, but an improvement over the first part of the album.

"23" closes out on a positive note with a slow-building keyboard-tinged anthem that grows into a majestic rock song with lines like "I won't always want these selfish things" and all sorts of emotionally charged lines synonomous with this so-called emo genre, for which a band that once was great, but now is merely mediocre save the occasional gem, is flying high the predictably mundane flag.

posted 12.01.04

-----
----- Matt Ralph has bags full of bad CD's. Add to his collection at matt@tangzine.com