Record Label: Joyful Noise
Genre: Folk
Band Link: link
Buy on Amazon.com

I was excited to finally listen to a CD that wasn’t punk, emo, or hardcore. This one was self-professed as ‘idiot-savant folk-rock’. Now I absolutely love folk music, and I know much of its history and listen to some of it religiously. What I love about it is that it is often the genre for which musicians need to be the least technically proficient, nor do they need strong vocals (ie Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan). You don’t even need your songs to be that different from one another (sorry Gordon Lightfoot). But what you do need to play decent folk, is to take it seriously.

Grampall Jookabox seems to have no sense of the history or sensibilities of folk music. The songs are meant to be sort of old-timey, but they have no nostalgic sense or for that matter, are even decently written. It reminds me of the anti-folk phase that came out of New York about five years ago, which in my opinion, was one of the worst trends in music since swing revival. Especially now when artists have found a groove in the psych-folk/neo-British folk trends, it really doesn’t make much sense for Mr. Jookabox to revisit such a lousy subgenre. Especially when he does it so poorly. Playing half-written songs recorded by a boombox mic and adding random noises and percussions does not a good album make. This album begins to be painful after about 10 minutes.

I tried to think of something nice to say about Grampall Jookabox, but there’s nothing. Even the album art is stupidly pretentious, and the song names, like Liggle Timmy Toothpick, Biz Biz Business, and Barbarashop Cricketet are downright terrible unless you’re actually from the deep south circa 1932.

The biggest shame of it all is that Grampall Jookabox got signed and was able to get a record out, while there are countless talented and amazing folk musicians all over the world playing smoky bars just wishing they had the opportunity that Jookabox has wasted with this turd. Hell, they even could’ve signed me.

Bottom Line: One of the worst folk albums I’ve ever heard.
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