It’s a rare feat for a band to combine moments of indisputable brilliance and unadulterated awfulness into eight tracks, but that is precisely what My Name Is Janet have achieved with Red Room Blue. As a debut, such bloopers are to be expected, but it’s the sheer scale of these when compared to their more captivating moments that’s the overriding facet of the album.
Tower Of Babel, with a slick production and funky drive, is at times reminiscent of King’s X and travels through lush segments during an invigorating 10 minutes. The same can be said of the title track, which aside from the divine musicianship, flows with a delightful quirkiness not regularly heard since the days of Gentle Giant.
The blatant flaws aren’t with their musical ability but down to the inclusion of hugely destructive ‘wacky’ ideas. Spoken sections from the Bible are distracting rather than meaningful. Accidental Love attempts to combine modern jazz with a spoken rap section, and in On The Powerful Waves we have a Swede, Jim Aviva, affecting a cod-Jamaican patois in a peculiar narration.
The only thing more shocking than hearing this is that at some point someone must have thought it was a cool idea.
