Jarmean

Tasty looking packaging, three track CD housed in a fold out DVD case depicting sepia set artwork that looks for all the world like it fallen from some Victoriana ink smudged newspaper in which you’d expect to gasp at the exploits of Sexton Blake. Which all said and done sounds about right given that these wayward urchins - who incidentally go by the chosen alter egos - Truman, Jericho, Mr Fox and Swanimaru - appear to concoct a fascinating music hall meets travelling freak show extravaganza that if we didn’t know better had mysteriously materialised into the sharp light of current times having magically stumbled through a rip in time from a previous fog bound existence littered with dastardly deeds, workhouses, debtors gaols, Dickensian nightmares, penny dreadfuls and the grotesque. Jarmean? are renegades, outsiders, a sore thumb - an anachronism of an age long gone, hailing from Olde London town they possess a musical mischief last notably encountered with Ian Dury and the Blockheads before them Vivian Stan shall / Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and further still to the post power pop shimmies of Ray Davies and the Kinks whilst sharing an affinity with punk pioneer Wild Billy Childish. Blending rag time, vaudeville, cabaret, skat jazz and tavern turned shanties, ’mind the gap’ is an instantly ear fetching slice of up beat and crooked party fayre, audaciously impish and cleverly spun it distinguishes itself by being so out of time and step with current fads and fashions that it sounds like a breath of fresh creative air wafting in to rid the squalid and stale stench of indie-ville, reference markers obviously point to White Town’s ’your woman’ and early career Space a la ’money’ / ’neighbourhood’. Need we say more, indeed we should - would you credit it the blighter isn’t even the best cut here - that honour is shared by the accompanying flip cuts ’’prophets of doom’ and ’baby doll’ - the former a killer spot of smoked musical hall whose obvious source inspiration seems to be Alan Price albeit that’ll be Alan Price grimly scratched and bruised narrating dreaded tales that purr with brooding consequence while the latter a drop dead gorgeous aching head hung moocher of faded romance cast deliciously amid a funereal demeanour and framed in a stunningly gloom trodden saloon bar melancholia that literally peels itself from the grooves and wraps its soul sucking fingers around your throat to choke the life out of you. Single of the Missive by some distance. www.myspace.com/jarmean
- Losing Today

DEMO OF THE WEEK
JARMEAN? – Mind The Gap – Good looking demo, nice artwork/package, excellent looking package actually, DVD size packaging with some instantly inviting artwork... And inside you'll find skanking rag time and 20’s jazz and do yer know what I mean? That’s what their name means, jahr-mean, do you know what I mean? Rag time jazz entertainers with ukuleles and tubas and upbeat bitter sweet rag-tag tunes and a bit of London folk-pop in there with all the rag and bone and vaudeville anarchy and mind the gap between what you hope for and what you get. Bit of an Ian Drury geezer on vocals, or that bloke with the hat who’s always in the news, that and encounters with transvestites and betting your house on a horse and becoming a nun and learning tricks with a crucifix and what you our’ta bloody get. Great songs, and ‘orrorscopes and Charleston to the profits or the prophets of some kind of doom or other and they surely would make you dance like daft until Nostradamus finally gets things right . A little bit of anarchism from each of us would make a big difference to everyone and three very fine tracks, very fine indeed - www.myspace.com/jarmean

- Organ Mag

Jarmean?
Genre: Punk / Showtunes / Melodramatic Popular Song
From: Babylon-don, London and South East
United Kingdom

Cockney sparrows Jarmean? (a common sound heard in the pubs and clubs of old London town a contraction of 'you know what I mean') sound like participants in a time travelling experiment. Whisked from their comfortable world as extras in a 1950s episode of the Good Old Days to an alternate reality; a place of horror, a place of noise, a place of despair, a place that they call Babylon-don

With 'Mind The Gap', the band's first mass-produced attempt to bring the spirit of the blitz to the internet generation the band are about to do for music hall what the Pogues did for the Irish jig and the Dresden Dolls did for Cabaret. It's brave, some would say foolhardy,and a difficult thing to pull off without sounding like outtakes from the Bugsy Malone soundtrack. And while the tracks on the band's myspace site do skirt a little too close to Chas 'n Dave and Tommy Steele for comfort they're infused with wit, flair and more spirit than a London during the blitz.



'Mind The Gap' is a subversive little ditty that's perfect for the beckoning era of hard times. Mind the gap between what you hope for and what you get, between the photo-shopped, unattainable lifestyles of the celebrities in the brain numbing glossy mags and the scraping by, minimum wage slavery, drown your sorrow realities of life. The two other songs on the Jarmean? single also emphasize how false hope can warp people's lives; 'Prophets of Doom' tells of a lady who reads that vile shit-rag 'The Daily Mail' too much becoming obsessed with an impending apocalypse while 'Baby Doll' relates the story of a man who was so in love with consumerism that he married a sex-doll, with tragic consequences.

Live Jarmean? are committed to entertaining as well as preparing Babylon-don for revolution, performing high-energy, thoughtful songs that don't preach. They are the punk band that parties like its 1909, travelling through time and space to bring to Babylon-don what it so badly needs: something different.

Madness, madness they call it madness!
- The Devil Has The Best Tuna Music Blog