the jim jims
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the jim jims

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"Westord Review of Hot Congres SHow"

Opening this show was the Jim Jims. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it sure wasn't a good post-punk band that wasn't going for the whole faux-Gang of Four thing. The band's singer reminded me of Sam Mickens from the Dead Science, but instead of a falsetto, his singing was strong and edgy. The band's finely layered guitars and imaginative chording reminded me of Fiction-era Comsat Angels, and the angular leads coupled with rhythms to match reminded me a bit of Wire. I felt like I was watching the Wall of Voodoo part of Urgh! A Music War, because these guys were definitely not following any of the latest musical trends here or anywhere. - Westword


"Denver Post Underground Music Showcase"

...I ran next to catch the Jim Jims’ set, where the band was pulling some Joy Division into a bowl of Mission Of Burma at the Skylark. Screams from the band’s singer, known only as Adam, left us hungry again. - Denver Post


"Bottom of the City Review"

Sometimes this whole post-punk revival seems like a wasteland. The Gang of Four's considerable influence stretches off into the distance in one direction. To the other, it's Joy Division as far as the eye can see. There's not much else. Never mind: There's a lot out there, but it's, well, just permutations of those icons of post-punk.

Denver's Jim Jims bust through those constraints on Bottom of the City. Although the five-piece musters the same sense of lingering dread and slash-and-burn, angular guitars that are the biggest weapons in any post-punk band's arsenal, it doesn't stop there. It isn't afraid to knock out some noise like The Birthday Party from time to time, nor is it afraid to yank the revival out of the shadow of Andy Gill and Ian Curtis and into the garage. Bottom of the City might be schooled in disaffected guitars and rubbery low ends, but it's still as sleazy of an album as you're going to find anywhere but in the depths of the trash-garage sewers.

Danger -- both post-punk's implied, existential type and the booze and stiletto fights of rock music -- tumble out of every groove on Bottom of the City. This is the late-'70s musical implosion we've all come to know so intimately if it were soaked in 151, rolled in a mixture of contraband powders and set aflame. It's the songs Ian Curtis would have written if his libido wasn't stifled by depression. It's The Stooges crammed into those fancy suits favored by Public Image Ltd. It is, of course, not authentic by any stretch of the revivalist imagination, but that's exactly what we need: A band that isn't scared to fuck with the formula.

The Jim Jims get outright naughty on "Horny," a tune where Martin lasciviously exalts over filling a woman -- you're left wondering if it's his girlfriend or just someone easily manipulated -- full of booze for an impending sex-a-thon. The band keeps up, with dirty keys giving the track a tarnished new-wave sheen as the rest of the band smears greasy garage-rock silt all over the track. "Brown Cloud" and "Land Mine" are a bit closer to post-punk conventions, with Martin's best impression of Interpol's best impression of Joy Division going on as the band powers through riffs with enough power to stir up the dust that's settled on the style's traditions. "City City" smashes Mission of Burma into Wall of Voodoo, then stomps on the pieces.

Tradition? Who needs it tradition? Bottom of the City is just fresh enough, just warped enough and just fun enough to shake your faith in your well studied post-punk catalog. Maybe the revival is finally looking forward instead of backward.
- Matt Schild - Aversion.com


"EP release show review"

Crepe-paper streamers and cardboard stars hung from the ceiling as an explosion of multicolored confetti littered the stage and most of the Hi-Dive’s floor. The Jim Jims cracked open a couple bottles of schwag champagne on stage, sipping it from plastic Dixie cups. Even to the most socially awkward rock geek, it was clear the Jim Jims were celebrating, and Friday night’s party was to mark the release of the band’s seven-song “Bottom of the City.”

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Not one to let things get too cheery, the band’s gloomy, confrontational post-punk quickly cast a wet blanket on the party, which, paradoxically, only made things more fun. A pair of shrill guitars slashed like rusty razorblades as a rhythm section powered into commanding punk rock rhythms, destroying any notion of the disco-punk beats usually associated with the post-punk revival in a heartbeat.

Frontman Adam Martin alternately channeled Ian Curtis’ disaffection and Birthday Party-era Nick Cave’s intensity as he rocketed through seedy songs about booze, sex and suicide. The baggage of Joy Division and Gang of Four clones attached to hipster-era post-punk went up in a fireball, as the Jim Jims reminded a half-full Hi-Dive that it’s still possible to terrify and entertain audiences with its chosen style.

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Not that the band worried too much about the carefully-scripted sense of control usually associated with its style. Taking its cues from generations of garage and punk bands, the Jim Jims’ set was just sloppy enough around the seams, full of rough, unfiled edges and the spontaneity little flubs add to a set. Don’t get too comfortable, folks. This is a band that could come crashing down in splinters at any moment.

It never came close to unwound, though, as the band galloped through a set that highlighted its latest release. Opening the night with its ode to drunken sex, “Horny,” the five-piece raced through “City City,” “Anti-Suicide” and “Strobe Light” at a clip quick enough to impress even Warped Tour skate-punks and rowdy enough to win over diehard Detroit proto-punkers.

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Before the Jim Jims’ launched their celebration, Vitamins and the Kissing Party treated fans to a different sort of celebration. With Kissing Party’s own new album waiting for release and a new video to premiere, Denver’s best jangle-pop outfit poured itself into the boy/girl vocals and lilting pop of classic Sarah Records acts and most of the current Matinee Records roster. The Kissing Party’s sunshine was the perfect foil for the Jim Jims’ gloom.

The Mile High City has a lot more to celebrate than merely a seven-cut album from the Jim Jims. We should be celebrating the return of smarmy, dangerous rock, the sort of smart and violent noise that’s been a rare commodity indeed since the hipsters’ refined sensibilities made folk, avant-garde and orchestral pop de rigueur for the scene. That’s certainly reason to celebrate, Denver. Crack into a bottle of the second-cheapest bubbly in the house. - The Denver Post Reverb Music Blog


"Denver Post Interview"

The Jim Jims have no illusions about themselves.

The Denver post-punk act strikes a lean, ominous figure onstage, dispensing with the usual mannerisms of guitar-based pop and aiming straight for the hips. On record, they hit hard and fast. Seven songs fly by in just over 16 minutes on their new EP, “Bottom of the City,” which the band will release on Friday at the Hi-Dive with Vitamins and Kissing Party.

It’s not the rote, three-chord punk of the Warped Tour crowd but an exercise in obsidian riffs, propulsive beats and ’80s-informed melodies — smart, yet dense and visceral. And the band wants to connect with listeners, whatever it takes.

“A lot of times we’re angry people and we fight with each other, and we want to put that out there,” said singer-guitarist Adam Martin, cradling a beer during a break in practice earlier this week. “We’re here in the modern day and we have no way to express how we want to be warriors and be fierce without shooting guns or selling crack or getting arrested. This is our other outlet.”

“We’re not like a bunch of Russell Crowes, though, drinking and fighting for no reason,” said keyboardist-guitarist Chris Fowke. “We’re channeling that nervous energy. It might sound cheesy, but when I get up and play I harness all of that agression I felt as a 15-year-old kid, all that alienation. I bust a lot of guitars and it’s not because I’m trying to be Kurt Cobain.”

Indeed, there are few bands in Denver’s thriving music scene that sound anything like the Jim Jims — bands that meld the steely disaffection of Joy Division with the noisy abandon of Sonic Youth. Blasts of molested guitars and keyboard envelop lyrics that summon awkward, angst-ridden adolescence, or alternately, the muddy slog and giddy potential of 20-something life, hanging out in darkened bars and living hand-to-mouth in grubby apartments and cramped houses.

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“We’re not necessarily doing anything that groundbreaking, but there still seems to be this thing in Denver where people are hesitant to be in your face,” said Fowke. “Our music has a pop element, but it’s also got this thing where it’s a little uncomfortable.”

“Bottom of the City” songs like “Land Mine” quickly skip past revivalist fetishes to sound ripped from the early SST catalog. The ultra-catchy “Anti-Suicide” channels “Sister”-era Sonic Youth like an angry, malfunctioning robot huddled in a corner. “Strobe Light” is a drunken brawl that imagines a punk-era version of the Doors, thanks in part to the rumbling bass of Trent Brocker and Spencer Alred’s serrated guitar work.

“My benchmark is that someday I want to play a show where people are pulling their hair out, they’re so excited,” said drummer Tony Terrafranca. “I’ve actually jumped off the stage and bitten friends of mine before to get them into it. I’m like, ‘Do whatever you have to do — do a couple shots of tequila if you need to.’”

“Bottom of the City,” recorded over three days last August at Uneven Studio with Bryan Feuchtinger (of Hot IQs and Accordion Crimes), certainly communicates the Jim Jims’ blunt live energy with songs that average around two minutes. Formerly the members had recorded on four-tracks and reel-to-reels, but it didn’t pass their overall muster.

“It’s hard to be lo-fi with five guys, being as loud as we are and kind of complex, without something having to drop out,” Alred admitted.

Fortunately, Feuchtinger made for an ideal engineer: his affordability and balance of speedy work ethic and patience appealed to the Jim Jims. Although, as Alred puts it, “We were giggling idiots in his studio a couple times.”

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The EP took a great deal longer to mix as the band realized its perfectionist tendencies and the need to balance the complex arrangements. Fowke’s uncle, Michael Johns, pitched in by taking on the task at his Red Wire Recordings in SoHo. The band had a variety of tonal and textural reference points, from the French Kicks and Walkmen for the percussion to Sonic Youth and Queens of the Stone Age for guitars, but ultimately found that the frenetic energy of their songs dictated the end product.

“I was hoping to come out with some sort of Joy Division type thing, but the fact is we play much faster than Joy Division,” Martin said. “It’s like we’re doing their new wave beat twice as fast. They have a lot more space in their music and we found that lots of reverb didn’t help.”

Now the group is planning an East Coast/ Midwest tour in late June with Kissing Party. As Martin points out, the band is sacrificing a lot to do it and trying drum up cash for the enterprise by playing shows and selling their handmade EPs. That’s not stopping them from already working on the follow-up with Lucas Johannes from Denver’s Action Packed Thrill Ride — a member of the Hot Congress collective, just like the Jim Jims.

“When we started playing we just wanted to get shows, but it’s nice now to be part of Hot Congress,” Martin said of the collective, which includes Achille Lauro, Widowers, Kissing Party, the Psuedo Dates, Fissure Mystic, Lil’ Slugger and many more.

“The whole point is to try to promote all of us at the same time so that maybe one day we’ll all care more about Denver bands,” Terrafranca said.

If their current path is any indication, they’re well on their way. - The Denver Post


Discography

Bottom of the City- EP
Release Date- May 15, 2009

Photos

Bio

The jim jims, based in Denver, CO, formed in March 2007 after several previous incarnations proved unsuccessful. The band�s sound is not easy to describe; However, the influences of new-wave and post-punk music are unmistakable both in the jim jims recordings and during their raucous live shows. Favorites around Colorado venues in the two years they’ve been a unit, the jim jims have consistently filled rooms of all sizes. A five man line-up kicking out solid sounds of distorted elegance, the jim jims give us something energized and new for their generation.

Following a couple of highly successful demo releases, Bottom of the City is the jim jims first official EP released on Fly Apart Records.