Just Enough Education To Perform - Stereophonics > Reviews > Top of Hype

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Completely unoriginal
Lyrics	Mediocre
Quality and consistency of tracks	One hit and lots of B-sides
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Weak
Value for Money

Advantages:	Something different from the boyband, plastic - band dredge that destroys local radio .
Disadvantages:	There is nothing original here .  Monotone singing isn't for everyone .

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

I got “Just Enough Education to Perform” for free. I’m glad I didn’t pay for it. Why did I get it free? It was given away by someone who had paid for the album and who hated it so much they’d rather be rid of it (and the reminder that they paid for it) than keep it locked away at the back of the CD rack.

My first impressions of the album were not good.

I listen to my CDs through the computer; I have a computer, I don’t have a CD player. I just wanted to listen to the dratted music. As is the way with any albums produced these days I fully expected some annoying multi-media package to spring to life.

The Sterophonics’s multi-media package did not spring to life; it slowly crawled to life. I was already growing inpatient when the error message appeared on my screen. Wonderful, it’s looking for Win32 dlls and since I’m using NT it wasn’t going to find anyway. However, the package did play and I went straight for the QUIT button. I didn’t want to check their website, watch the interview or find out about the making of the video. I wanted to listen to the music. The darn thing wouldn’t quit… no, it wasn’t another computer code error, they thought it would be a good idea if they had a video clip of everyone in the band saying “Goodbye” slowly to you.

By the time the first slow track started to play I was already bored.

A music review should be about the music though; I shall endeavour to comment on that. I don’t like it much. I’d enjoyed some of the Sterophonics’ early releases and had noted they’d not been the success I thought they would. This was a good year or so back now. The Sterophonics found an early second lease of life and we’re currently in the middle of this. M2 (my beloved companion) likes to play Mr Writer from time to time. I liked neither that video nor the song at first, over time I started to like it, the dirge of monotone began to form some sort of strange appeal in my mind. That phase didn’t last too long though, almost as quickly as my appreciation for the track snuck up on me, it left me. The song was just too samey, nothing changed in it.

To my horror, the entire album is the same. I’m not sure whether there are eleven tracks on this CD or just eleven chapters of the same droney song.

When I do a music review here on Ciao I try and cover each song in turn. I generally manage to do that because there is enough difference between each song to warrant some sort of comment. Sure, not every track/chapter on J.E.E.P. is exactly the same but there certainly isn’t enough of a distinction to form any sort of comparison.

My RealJukeBox informs me that the genre for J.E.E.P. is “rock.” Ah. That’s a laugh. I feel a better genre would be “lecture”. Honestly, that’s what springs to mind whenever I try and listen to the CD. I can’t but help picture some bored young lecturer going on and on about socio-politics while some non-offensive guitar strumming goes on in the background.

Life sucks. That’s the message behind this album. Nothing is easy. The last track/chapter on the album is called "Rooftop” and is written from the point of view of someone standing on the rooftop’s edge debating whether or not he wants to jump off. That pretty much sets the tone. It isn’t a very good song though. If you do want a breathtaking song written on exactly the same idea (only about five years before this) then check out “Jump” by Clawfinger (yes, I know, who?).

The inspiration to include some of the lyrics from any of the tracks/chapters isn’t really there either and that’s normally something I’m keen to do. In this case I fear that too many of the lyrics are simply repeated again and again in the songs to warrant very much meaning when taken out of place. Also, I like to copy the lyrics from the CD sleeve just to make sure I get them exactly write. The lyrics from the songs are presented in the sleeve of J.E.E.P. Well, in theory. There are pages of unreadable scrawls which I assume to be the lyrics - but as the way with unreadable scrawls, I can’t read them. One nice touch, though, are the comments from various people about the inspiration behind the various songs. I’ll note that these snippets of information are presented in an easy to read typeface font - perhaps we’re supposed to read these but not the lyrics?

Is the album all bad? Am I going to give them the dreaded one star mark?
No?

Despite the samey-samey, drone, drone, drone tone of the songs I can appreciate that that they are well produced. The instrumental accompaniment is talented and well played even if it is played in the same sulking background manner as the vocals.

I’ve saved the best for last.

“Have a Nice Day” is track five on the disc. If you look on the back of the CD sleeve you’ll see that it has been hi-lighted by having a yellow box drawn around it. Huzzah. With this song you get the feeling that they’re making an effort. The style of the song is certainly more up beat. This is especially evident in the music where the guitars play faster and the application of cheerful backing singing works wonders. Kelly Jones, the lead singer (a man, by the way), even changes his tone a little bit. He doesn’t do this in “Nice to be Out”.

You could a lot better than this album. In fairness, you could also do a lot worse. Besides, I believe the album is currently top of the charts….