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Live at The Cherry Tree, Dublin 26 April 08.
Thrilling and epic; two words to describe the performance on the night, with top class grooves and excellent stage presence, Baby Jenx pulled off a great gig. Even though The Cherry Tree room is a more intimate gig, Baby Jenks gave you a much wider feel, as if you were at a big stadium with full fat sound and a very tight set, while playing some class tunes from their forthcoming debut album that will be released soon this year. With some melodic grooves and superb vocals on board, this is one act you need to get out and see.
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In December 2005 Ronan Keating judged a competition on Dublin‘s FM104, with the prize being a support slot for Ronan‘s own Christmas gig. Baby Jenx were the grateful winners and set about wooing the mostly female Vicar Street audience before Ronan did his thing. But the connections with the former Boyzone singer seem to end there - Baby Jenx are not a boy band, they do not dance and they do not cover country songs.
Baby Jenx have been together since 2005 and have been busy building their profile and experience, having performed on the IMRO Showcase tour, the NEMO festival in the USA and Castlepalooza among others. Furthermore the band have been commissioned to write tracks for Tess Nanavati‘s independent films "Nemoc" and "Dreams Of An Angel". The band are Gary Reddy on guitars and vocals, Graham Carey on drums, Ewen Denny-Fergusson on piano and keys, Mick Reddy and bass. The tracks on this 3 track demo are taken from their forthcoming debut EP.
Their music can be described as melancholy piano rock and could be compared to the likes of Radiohead, Keane, Jeff Buckley and Coldplay. If sad music makes you happy (and that certainly works for me) Baby Jenks will make you very happy indeed. Gary Reddy‘s voice reaches soaring, glorious falsettos with an ease that would make Thom Yorke envious.
The CD opens with "Summer‘s Gone" and with the refrain "Summer‘s Gone, we carry on" you can be pretty sure hearts have been damaged but all is not lost. "25 Miles" continues the theme with the sadness of a relationship that shouldn‘t be working but is managing to hang together. If we weren‘t all so dejected maybe one of us would stand up and put an end to it all. But the misery is so beautiful, so intoxicating, so heavenly.
The EP finishes with "So Long", a slow ballad, which starts with piano, bass and vocals and when words aren‘t enough Reddy‘s voice carries an emotional cargo that reaches the places words can‘t touch.
If you‘re still enjoying piano rock check out Baby Jenx, they‘re as good as anyone else out there.
Review by: Stephen Egan - Musician.ie
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
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Bio
BABY JENX
THE PAST: Named after a character in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, Baby Jenx have been together since the summer of 2005. Influenced by the big stadium sounds of U2, Coldplay and Radiohead, but with their own musical aesthetic firmly to the fore, they played their debut gig in legendary Irish venue Mother Redcaps later that same year.
"Gary Reddy eases the crowd in with a range of vocal pirouettes reminiscent of Thom Yorke, along with a series of gentle rock ballads" – Hot Press
Over the following months, Baby Jenx honed their live skills with a multitude of gigs. Their sparkling shows at the Irish IMRO showcase, Boston’s NEMO Music Festival and Castlepalooza earned them rave reviews.
"Their sound has clear elements of Coldplay, and singer Gary Reddy is a natural performer and exceptional singer" – IMRO magazine
They recorded their first demo with producer Declan Lonergan in Bluebird Studios in Co. Kildare. This demo received extensive radio airplay, and was immediately chosen as Hot Press magazine’s ’Demo of the Fortnight’ by none other than Jackie Hayden (the former CBS boss, known for giving U2 their first record deal).
"The real gem is ’So Long’, which opens around a slow staccato piano before it builds, with sensitivity and pathos, to a real ear-opener" – Hot Press
’So Long’ also gained the band a video production through a competition run by Hot Press and TISCH School of Performing Arts in New York. The resulting video was subsequently playlisted on Sky Network’s The Musician Channel.
Baby Jenx so impressed their video director, filmmaker Tess Nanavati, that she commissioned them to write two original songs for her own independent film projects. ’Evanesce’ and ’Nemoc’ feature prominently in Nanavati’s movies Dreams Of An Angel and Nemoc respectively.
THE FUTURE: Baby Jenx are currently in studio working on their debut album proper. As yet untitled, it will be released in summer 2008.
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