The Second Coming 0 of Jesus Jones

Il titolo del nostro post è tratto da un articolo di Jim Walsh. Tra i molti oserei dire imbarazzati ( sulla scia di ciò che è avvenuto per l'ultimo film di M. Gibson) che ho trovato sulla stampa statunitense penso che sia quello che piu' si avvicina allo spirito delle nuove composizione di quest'anima inquieta del panoramo rock internazionale se non altro perchè è stato scelto dalla stessa Jones per presentare il suo nuovo cd. A noi, non trovando parole migliori, non ci resta che augurarvi buon ascolto.

by Jim Walsh

There's an exciting new lyricist coming out of Los Angeles and here, there, and everywhere, whom everyone will be talking about in a new way in a couple of months. He's got as many pseudonyms as he does myspace pages but you probably already know him as the son of God, the prince of peace, the reason for the season, the scapegoat for the war, etc., but with the exception of, say, The Gospel Of Thomas Aquinas, we've never heard him like we're about to hear him.

"Do you know my name?," he sings on his new record The Sermon On Exposition Boulevard , in the same sexy mofo voice that all the cannibalistic Catholic girls -- all those hot vampirellas who grew up drinking all that blood -- wet their pants over when they heard him sing in the '70's rock opera that bears his superstar name.

Yes, my brother, we know your name. Your name is Jesus, and sexy is back. In the form of you in me, us, and Rickie Lee Jones.

Jones' new album won't be released by New West Records until February 6, but I've been playing it non-stop since I received it a few days ago. It's a breathtaking work, sure to be one of the most discussed and ingested records of next year (if only by serious music listeners), but at the moment I'm happy to simply report that it melds gorgeously with all the Christmas music in the air; all those beautiful underground sentiments about Jesus and love.

"Music is love," Jeff Tweedy once said, which is what I've always believed, just as so many have believed "Jesus is love."

Jesus and music. Combine the two without the ball and chain of the Christian dope show or numbskull preaching -- as Jones and her collaborators does on every track of Sermon -- and the result is something so rare it feels historic, necessary, and distinctly of its time, the way other classic mystic-beatnik albums like Horses and Astral Weeks and Nighthawks At The Diner and Late For The Sky screamed out of the sky with something important to say.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but this Sermon is important: The lyrics to all 13 songs are Christ's words, and, as we hurl towards doomsday and another 30,000 troops in Iraq in the name of someone else's god, hell if they don't sound like Barack and Beck and the Mountain Goats riffing together.