Search - Gene Loves Jezebel :: Giving Up the Ghost

Caveat Emptor: This isn't Gene Loves Jezebel

07/14/2003

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Warning - this is NOT the same people who created such great albums as Discover, House of Dolls, or early goth greats. The "band" is really only 1/5th of GLJ, namely Michael Aston, who split in 1989 and someone through crafty legal moves has taken over the GLJ trademark from the other four members of the band. This is like Keith Richards somehow gaining sole rights to the Rolling Stones moniker, and touring and recording under that name without the others. And the musical results are commensurate: stripped bare, song-less noise. You'll be stupefied and shocked and want to run out and overdose on heroin. If you want real GLJ, check out Discover, House of Dolls or Heavenly Bodies instead."

Why you have to love this record!

William Buswoth | Glasgow | 04/23/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Many of us G.L.J. fans wondered whatever became of Gene Loves J, after the fantastic early records Promise and Immigrant, they seemed to drift into a so-so sea of pop mediocrity, What became of the passion and originality of the early years, it's so apparent now! Love Lies Bleeding was clear a signal enough to what was missing all these years and Giving Up The Ghost is dna evidence of the genius lost. This is a remarkable document. So diverse and original and just magnificent. There are so many avenues explored, it's Pollack and Picasso too and poetic and street wise, it rOCKS!!! One day the world will discover this Artist and I pray sooner than later because Michael deserves recognition above all who walk this landscape. Touching, passionate, tender and witty. Forget the name on the sleeve (A rose is a rose by any other name)CHECK THIS OUT!!"

Two Point Five Stars and Falling

Boz Hubris | Detroitish | 08/25/2004

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I'm not sure why I'm opening myself to multiple negative feedbacks and angry e-mails but here goes: GIVING UP THE GHOST, like I said in a previous review, is a bit too ponderous and fails to attain the level of success of LOVE LIES BLEEDING. Too much seems to be going on here. That is, too much effort to get an edgy and amorphic sound that ultimately topples this release. The title track is the very proof of this. A good rocker that takes 3 minutes of transcendetal meditation to get to the punch (yes I understand the ideal of dual concepts in one song)and then goes on about 2 minutes too long to that pursuit. I like the song and if not for the fact of the many mood shifts it would drag on. But to be honest I thought it was two songs when I first casually listened to it. My main gripe with it is that it's the opening song. "Phreque" would have been a better opener and "Giving Up The Ghost" a mid-to-later track. That said, "Phreque" and "Sly Old Fox" are queer little songs but move along nicely into the hypnotic "Nico Superstar," which is by far the best song on the album and one of Michael's better ones. "Don't Spoil My Song" takes an odd turn into some amalgamation of Radiohead meets Rage Against The Machine and I think it's for the worse. The music isn't such a put-off but the lyrics are a bit tacky. "Push" continues in this vein of excess and reminds me too much of Van Halen in the main "riff"? The interlude is simply gaudy and pretentious and deserving of a Van Halen comparison. That's seemingly what they were looking to do. I hope not. GOD I HOPE NOT! But sadly it seems obviously true. "Speak My Language", the Morphine cover, seems a bit too punkish for Michael's style and sounds more like Bono in one of his "let's make a million dollars a minute routines" than something edgy. "TwoBoysandaWheelbarrow" piles on the afforementioned excess. "Drive" doesn't save the album or turn the momentum at this point, it just is. Commonstock that is. Nothing original or pressing. "Drowning and Waving" keeps the ball rolling towards oblivion and "Limey" drives the spikes into the coffin. Apparently he thought it was Jim Morrison's tomb, but it feels less and less like poetry as the time dwindles away and more like protest art. Protesting what? Art itself? Perhaps."