Jerk Music Critic: Sixpence None The Richer

This is not actually their début but one might accurately call it their crossing-over. Originating as a slight act in the Christian alternative scene, this outwardly secular third album expands their oeuvre and enlivens their style without compromising their perspective. While This Beautiful Mess was somewhat moody and overly prone to navel-gazing, Matt Slocum's songwriting has both matured and lightened to leaven the pensiveness with better beats and a little pop yet preserve the signature lyrical heft so sweetly delivered by lead Leigh Nash. Whether a meditation on emotion's fragility ("I Won't Stay Long") or just a gentle plea for romantic affirmation ("Can't Catch You"), her breathy nightingale vocals serve as the band's soul while the richer production by Steve Taylor yields a stronger body. The spiritual themes have not been abandoned ("Anything," "Moving On"), yet they ground the album without smothering it just as much as the sugary moments like "Kiss Me" don't trivialize it. It's not perfect — the Pablo Neruda-derived "Puedo Escribir" is fatally pretentious, one jarring note in a great symphony — but the fact they stay true to themselves throughout only makes this earnest, appealing album more delightful. The reissue adds "There She Goes," another airy single in the vein of "Kiss Me" and no less charming. (Content: no concerns.)

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Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟🌟
A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟
Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

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Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

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Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

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How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.