{"id":42029,"date":"2010-07-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/radio-ep\/"},"modified":"2010-07-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-02T00:00:00","slug":"radio-ep","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/radio-ep\/","title":{"rendered":"Radio (EP)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I get a lot of music in my e-mail, and it only makes me wish I didn\u2019t go to school full time so I could review all the indie up-and-comers that come my way. But I couldn\u2019t help getting struck by the quick and sweet EP from Jon Palmer & The New Complainers, and not just because their drummer also moonlights as one-half of Jaybird (whose debut album I unabashedly loved earlier this year). The thing that\u2019s so appealing about the Radio<\/i> EP is that it has a sense of timelessness \u2013 this music isn\u2019t swathed in 00\u2019s AutoTune or decked out with frills. It\u2019s clean and rich, a bit bluesy, with a winking swagger to Jon Palmer\u2019s vocals. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Hailing from Roxbury, Massachusetts, the band lists Lou Reed, The Who, and Guided By Voices among their influence, and I can hear a bit of The Raconteurs in their guitars and vocals. But it\u2019s the lyrics that really sell this one for me: deceptively simple musings on relationships, such as opener \u201cBrollo.\u201d It\u2019s easy to get swept up in Justin Costellessa\u2019s smooth, enveloping riffing, but lines like \u201cSo this is your love that\u2019s putting me through hell \/ You walk away smiling \u2018cause you\u2019ve got another one under your belt \/ It\u2019s nice to see that you\u2019ve been thinking of me\u201d hit right to the heart with their subdued seething. And when the song finishes out with Palmer repeating, \u201cI\u2019m doing fine on my own\u201d accompanied only by a last flicker of guitar, it\u2019s triumphant but still aching.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u00a0Next up, \u201c5 O\u2019Clock\u201d finds itself infused with warm horns and a loose, jazzier feel. It\u2019s a quick, two minute track but packed with little gems of wisdom like \u201cDon\u2019t do anything stupid unless it comes straight from the heart\u201d and \u201cAre you in love with her or the idea of it?\u201d. Third cut finds the band coming more into their own attitude, less lovelorn and more decked out with chugging slices of guitar, drums that rumble low in the background, and some nice slips of bass (courtesy of Andrew Jacques) that make me regret ever forgetting about the excellence of bassists. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Radio <\/i>closes out with its title cut, another dose of warm, jangling confidence and the resonating line \u201cI was never as bad as you made me sound\u2026All\u2019s fair in love and war, I\u2019m just not sure which this is\u201d \u2013 and who hasn\u2019t come out of a relationship thinking that exact same thing? It just showcases further what this up-and-coming group does so well: taking a simple approach and giving it a spark of energy and heart to make it so much more evocative than just an intermixing of cool-sounding and catchy riffing and vocals. The four cuts on the Radio <\/i>EP are definitely worth checking out, and stay tuned for what Jon Palmer & The Complainers has to offer.<\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":30369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8597],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-42029","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jon-palmer-the-complainers","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42029"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42029"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}