Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 02/11/09
Label: Punk Rock Blues Records

Fashions may come and go and the cyclical nature of music continues to throw up the most unlikely - and usually the most undeserving - heroes that disappear in the blinking of an eye but rock'n'roll will never die. And let's be crystal clear about the nature of rock'n'roll: this is music made from primal, uncontrollable urges; it's instinctive - a gut reaction that shoots first and doesn't bother to ask any questions later. The hips are where it's at and the brain is something to be pummelled with the sheer thrill of delinquency and Jim Jones - one-time frontman of '90s rockers Thee Hypnotics and Black Moses - knows this more than most.

"Here To Save Your Soul" is a collection that more than lives up to its title. Culled from The Jim Jones Revue's first four singles and B-sides, it may share an execution with The Beta Band's "Three EPs" but has more than a passing acquaintance with The Godfathers' 1986 compilation "Hit By Hit". Like The Godfathers - and indeed The Flamin' Groovies with whom they most share an aesthetic - The Jim Jones Revue hold no punches when it comes to the business of rocking.

With Jones at his larynx-shredding best, this collection more than holds its own against their self-titled debut of last year and acts as a mouth-watering primer for their next eagerly anticipated collection. With all the tracks sounding as if they were recorded less in a garage and more in a trash can in the light of the full moon, The Jim Jones Revue whips up the kind of storm that lesser bands can only dream of and fans of Los Campesinos will never be able to comprehend or experience.

"Freak Of Nature" and "Burning Your Down" are so raw they're crying out for Savlon while the, er, elemental "Elemental" does exactly what it says on the tin. This is music that shreds speakers and is so gloriously distorted that the only thing keeping things together is the manic performance in the eye of this sweeping hurricane. And they're not shy about their influences either; Elvis' "Big Hunk O' Love" is simply electrifying while their take on Little Richard's "Good Golly Miss Molly" - still the best ever song about shagging - is an up-against-the-wall knee-trembler of lustful and sinful intensity that barely has time to pull up its pants and scarper into the night.

A heart-pounding, visceral experience from the first distorted note to the last, The Jim Jones Revue is the living and undiluted embodiment of rock'n'roll - accept no substitutes.

    by Julian Marszalek