 Jonezetta
Cruel to be YoungTooth & Nail Records
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Jonezetta can come to the festival, but let’s keep them away from the main stage.
This Mississippi-bred Christian indie-rock quintet doesn’t exactly push the envelope on their second full-length album, Cruel to be Young, nor do they deliver it.
Early and often in the album, Jonezetta falls into a trap of predictable lyrics and meter, rarely stretching the imagination, as evident in the first lines of the upbeat “Busy Body”: “She’s the one, she’s the one, she’s the one for me/I bring her flowers when she starts to feel lonely”.
The band cites influences such as Tom Petty and Wilco, while their fans compare them to The Cure. They are a group of dudes with good backing vocals and an organ, but that’s about where the comparison ends.
A gentle combination of pop, emo and active rock, Cruel to be Young’s “about a girl” motif would appeal most appropriately to a tween boy. There’s “Busy Boy” (If you love a girl), “Holding onto You” (If you’re sick of a girl), and “Fur Coat (Roaming Like Animals)” (If you’re pining for a girl). Unfortunately, the album doesn’t get much deeper than that.
Jonezetta’s apparent foray into complexity, “Sick in the Teeth” plays like a PG version of a Nine Inch Nails or Shinedown song. With lyrics like, “I am you, you are mine/We are one, at a time/This is old, will you shut it off” and “It’s nothing personal/It’s nothing at all/It’s nothing personal/I just got to get you out of my blue veins”, its hard to decipher what the song is actually about. Maybe it’s heroin use? Maybe it’s aging? Maybe it’s about a girl again?
If you stumbled across Jonezetta playing in a local bar or at a friend’s party, you’d stick around. Most of their songs have an energy and could definitely get the right crowd singing along. The album’s strongest track, “Valentine”, could even substitute as something on The Killers’ 2004 smash Hot Fuss.
But it’ll take a few more Valentines before I’m ready to choo-choo choose Jonezetta.
– Peter Ciferri
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