Search - JAMES MICHAEL :: Inhale

It takes a healthy ego to write and largely self-record a debut as self-assured and as musically infectious as this recording. But it takes an artist to turn that sense of self on its head, scraping the underside of the very ambition and narcissism that got him this far for inspiration and enlightenment. Meet James Michael. With not much more than a brief stint in the Riverdogs on his resumé, coupled with a discerning taste for 1970s and '80s pop-rock (not a lick of tired irony in his cover of Joe Jackson's "Is She Really Goin' Out with Him?"), Michael's musical instincts seem remarkably sound. It's tempting to toss off one of those cheap comparisons--Kurt Cobain's often fragile self-awareness crossed with Bryan Adams's refined chart-pop instincts--but that does none of the parties any justice, especially Michael himself. On a debut that sets its pop-sense bar remarkably high from the opening moments of the buoyantly self-deprecating title track, Michael peruses his soul with bemused curiosity. And if the comically imperfect relationships the singer outlines sometimes sour, he tellingly wags a finger at himself in the mirror, then shrugs it off and gets on with life. There's a bittersweet sense of honesty to his reedy ballads--witness the casual drug references that are as real as they are tragicomic. If Michael's career consistently delivers as well as this record does, he's going to have a lot to be inspired and bemused by real soon. --Jerry McCulley