Joe Jackson - Look Sharp
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Joe JacksonEdition: Music CD
Format: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2001-08-14
Music Label: A&M
Soundtracks:
- One More Time
- Sunday Papers
- Is She Really Going Out With Him?
- Happy Loving Couples
- Throw It Away
- Baby Stick Around
- Look Sharp!
- Fools In Love
- (Do The) Instant Mash
- Pretty Girls
- Got The Time
- Don't Ask Me
- You Got The Fever
Free Music Notes for Look Sharp
Free Music Review: Great debut album.
Hit: 5 Stars
I wish Joe Jackson was going to be in Rock Band at some point. I recently discovered his album Look Sharp! which I alluded to earlier. It's really one of the most overlooked, underappreciated rock albums that history isn't doing any favors for. You may know Joe Jackson for his smash "Is She Really Going Out With Him?", which, in the days of Kazaa, was commonly attributed to The Cars not unlike how "Dancing in the Moonlight" was pegged to Van Morrison instead of it's true performers, King Harvest. "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" topped out at number 21 in 1979 in the US and 13 in the UK and propelled the album to reach #20 in the US and #40 in the UK (credit: Wikipedia).
Look Sharp! features a ton of fun rock, early pop/punk, and dancible tracks. It's very comparable to My Aim Is True in terms of style, and I would wager that Jackson was heavily influenced by Elvis Costello's breakthrough debut album. I haven't done a review in a while, so why not take a look at this forgotten gem?
Joe Jackson - Look Sharp!
1. One More Time - Five stars. A great song with a driving guitar and bass. One of the things that Jackson does really well on this album is his ability to play with minutia and tweak verses and choruses so that they are not identical. He does this extremely well on "One More Time", especially midway through the verses. Jackson always has a really nice song writing ability to make the verses and chorus sound unique from eachother enough so so that it is a pleasant surprise when the chorus makes an appearance but it doesn't disrupt any of the flow he has built. Bonus points to the bassist on this track.
2. Sunday Papers - Four stars. This track allows the listener to catch their breath. It's a nice, simple rocker with really clever, biting lyrics, a dub-styled guitar, and some more nice bass work. "If you want to know about the new sex position, you can read it in the Sunday Papers." The song would work a little better if they didn't add a little extra post chorus in. Kind of disrupts the flow.
3. Is She Really Going Out With Him? - Five stars. A really great rock and roll song that captures the feeling of twenty-something heart ache. Bonus points for the piano in the bridge. This is THE song you've unquestionably heard from this album before you've read this review. It holds up flawlessly almost thirty years later.
4. Happy Loving Couples - Five stars. One of, if not the most dancible songs on the record. Jackson displays another great story telling skill in relating a simple, pure feeling that most potential listeners have felt. I almost took off a star for him rhyming girl and world twice. Fun drumming and catchy chorus.
5. Throw It Away - Four styles. A quick style change in this one. We revert back to more of the early pop/punk sound that One More Time had with almost Jerry Lee Lewis piano and vocal stylings, with a harder edge. Bass work is phenomenal in this one. A little too hard for me, meshes ok with the album, just feels slightly out of place.
6. Baby Stick Around - Five stars. Super fun song with an extraordinarily creative chorus. The transition from the verse to the chorus makes me jealous that I did not write it. Very cool variation on rockabilly styles in the verses. If there is one more thing that Joe Jackson does very well in this album is that he mashes together styles that should never normally go together and he does it ingeniusesly.
7. Look Sharp! - Five stars. The track bands like Franz Ferdinand and Modest Mouse wish they could have written. This is how you write smart, sharp dance music that still has an artistic edge.
8. Fools in Love - Four stars. I'd be remiss to point out right from the start that I listened to this album with my father, who knows a great deal about music, on a road trip once, and the first thing he asked was "Is this Elvis Costello?". I'd also be remiss to point out that this song sounds very similar to "Watching the Detectives". It has got a nice rock/reggae flair to it, but for me, it sounds way to similar to "Watching the Detectives" to give it five stars, even though this song's chorus blows it out of the water.
9. (Do the) Instant Mash - Four stars. A fun dance track that is really pushed by the continuingly excellent bassist, that is about dancing. I guess the old rule of selling records is if all else fails, try to create a new dance song. This song is more of a tongue in cheek look at that. Fun song to tap your toes to.
10. Pretty Girls - Five stars. A fun play on late 50's, early 60's rock and roll stylistically with some fun lyrics about scoping out the honeys. A nice bridge.
11. Got the Time - Four stars. A very hard song to end this album. Punk elements all over the place here.
Joe Jackson's debut album is definitely something all fans of rock and roll should give a spin to, especially if you are a fan of Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True, early J. Giles Band, or even more modern "dance" bands.
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