Album Review by EDF
This is an interesting one. Jailsound, sounding like their roots belong to the late 60’s / 70’s MOR, seems to bring a bit of hippy weariness mixed with a Neil Young / Fleetwood Mac influenced approach to their music. Now here’s where the lines of sensibility break down. On first impression, Jailsound sounds like they come from West Coast America but in fact are from Bergamo in Italy. Dario de Rosa and Mauro Galbiati started recording on a laptop studio before going to a studio to complete the album with the rest of the group.
Starting with the radio friendly THE KING OF NOTHING, there are hints of Americanisms within the lyrics “if nobody told you’re a charmless loser, dear dude I’m telling you know”. NEW DECADE LIE asks the puzzling question “what’s the AO?” I really do love songs that really don’t have any obvious meaning and this is no exception. The intro to the title track FREE IN A CAGE sounds like Fleetwood Mac’s GOLD DUST WOMAN but it soon settles down as the song questions if a person’s action is worth the pain, “to hide you’re smile, you’re thinking it’s easiest, to avoid your pain”.
KUNK (PAIN TRAIN) is a bit dull and frustrating to listen to as you wait for something to kick-start the track. MIST is a slow, brooding, love is blind tale of a man who won’t admit his love for his woman as she waits “unable to realise, she wasted her life for you”. E-ASY, we are told is a virtual tone poem whatever that might be and is the only clue to what the song might be about. MAY I? questions whether “should I, take his place now?” to a smooth, at times, jazzy musical backdrop. I’M SORRY is another slow burning track and is a bit of an anti-climax to the rest of the album.
While it’s quite refreshing to hear a group from one side of the Atlantic trying to sound like their counterparts on the other side, the lyrics are brief and to the point but their instrumental breaks on some of the tracks could have made this into a better album. Those that are featured within are quite good and overall this is a decent debut from a group that are capable of producing great music.
