Search - Jack Peñate :: Everything Is New

His rebirth. A brilliant, captivating mix of different genre

bollywood | 08/22/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Jack Penate's second album is considered by many to be his music coming of age.

It's a minor comeback, but it's still a hugely impressive one. Only two years ago, upon the release of his debut album, "Matinée", Jack Peñate was a fairly middle-of-the-road might have been a Housemartins for the Noughties, at worst another Kate Nash impersonator.

"The idea behind making it was for me to do something that was driven by drums and bass with rhythms from music outside of my home. It was a complete adventure remembering and finding all the music that came to inspire the record".

His time away has been well-spent, though. After a year in the studio with his producer Paul Epworth, his appropriately-named sophomore record, "Everything Is New", is totally different from the first.

There are no concessions to synth-pop chart fads and no unnecessary guest stars.

"Delightfully scruffy disco vaguely reminiscent of Orange Juice and Aztec Camera. Shucking off his lo-fi mockney origins, Penate has got his glitterball spinning.

While retaining an edgy vocal spirit of real life in philosophical songs about love and death, Penate's zestful arrangements conjure 'Saturday Night Fever' grooves.

Touching, clever and poptastic". - Neil McCormick

He has made such a massive leap forward in scope and quality in the space of one album.

The 24-year-old sounds reborn.

Every one of the nine songs his latest release is a fascinating blend of genres, best broadly described as "London soul".

Penate's new material is very good. He has suddenly found a sense of rhythm: the current single "Tonight's Today", for example, might sport an inane and somewhat gimmicky chorus, but it's as catchy as any pop song has a right to be, and the influences of a merging of afrobeat and house music are richly realised.

"Be the One" is the usual love song, but the traditional four-piece band arrangement does a great job of recreating the dynamics of house music.

Even when slowing down the pace for "Every Glance", Peñate's music benefits from a lithe new sensuality and a bona fide sense of adventure.

Elsewhere, the urgent primal scream of "Let's All Die" (written when Penate was 18 and crossing America on Greyhound buses with his bassist, Joel) forms a diptych with the more mournful "Body Down" in considering how death might be approached.

These are big themes for a young artist, and they demonstrate how Penate has now moved out of his contemporaries' shadows.

Very few albums released this year take as many risks and succeeds so clearly.

For sure Penate will surely live up to all expectations.



Matinee

It's Not Me, It's You"