Jersey Budd - Shotgun Times [single]

This Feeling Records

June 7, 2009, 12:35 PM

Views: 357   Comments: 0

Buy Jersey Budd - Shotgun Times [single] From Amazon.com

My initial thoughts when I picked up this single for review were “Oh crap, not this guy, I hate this guy”. Probably not a good sign.

My first encounter with Jersey Budd was his opening slot for Eskimo Joe’s UK tour in April of this year, so I was pretty much resigned to feeling the same way about his latest single ‘Shotgun Times’ as I did about his performance that evening.

To sum up my comments from that fateful evening back in April, a few words such as “annoying jester” and “bland” were used to describe the 24-year-old singer songwriter’s set. And here, with ‘Shotgun Times’, I can only find one satisfactory word to describe Jersey Budd fully – blah.

To fight in the Jersey Budd corner a little, the intro into ‘Shotgun Times’ is slightly more country rock and bordering on intriguing, which moves onto chorus “All I need is my heart beat/Tripping up by your side/But are you people aware, that you’re living in the Shotgun Times”. There is nothing technically wrong with the performance thus far, and the sound is listenable – but in today’s world, I, and other music lovers alike, don’t have time to waste our limited listening hours on purely listenable music.

The epicentre for me of “Shotgun Times”, taken from full-length release Wonderlands, comes when Jersey Budd fills in the end of the track by repeating the groundbreaking lyrics “Sha la la la” more times than is necessary for the line to take effect.

Budd has confessed to be trying to “put a bit of positivity back into pop”...I honestly didn’t realize pop had become so despondent in the first place? In all fairness though, and not to write Jersey Budd off totally, I will wait with bated breath to see what all 10 tracks featured on Wonderlands have in store for the apparently waning genre that is popular music.

#1 | Subscribe | Send to Friend | Print | Discipline | Report