JD Smith and Bermuda Groove

22 July 2009

The lovely Kooba boys are taking a well earned summer break and, to ensure you don't miss your usual K fix of unsigned music, have asked me - cogitata - to attempt to entertain you with musings on my latest aural adventures.

JD Smith

On Sunday, whilst in the Fox & Firkin in Lewisham for the phonetics@theFox spoken word and acoustic music evening, I was treated to the dirty blues stylings of JD Smith , whom I previously had the pleasure of listening to at the New Cross Inn.

Mr Smith plays and sings with gusto (not a term I use often but the one that comes to mind), and even after breaking a string he continued to assault the lazy Sunday evening crowd with his grinding slide guitar and urgent drawl. Whilst a white Englishman playing blues and singing with a distinctively southern US accent is always a little dubious, JD won me over the first time I saw him; he's simply very good at what he does.

He was good enough to furnish me with an album - Hey Rube! - that features instruments other than guitar but retains the earthy sound of his solo performance. Sitting listening to it in the calm of solitude, it brings to mind, for example, Buddy Holly after a few days and nights of Jack Daniel's and Marlboro's. It's a theme that persists, and brings me to my only criticism; whilst being good at what he does, JD Smith's offering is nothing new. Not that it need be, as it's very well executed and highly entertaining, but I can understand why it turns off just as many people as it stimulates.

That said, I'm sure I'll always take pleasure in watching him perform, especially with my hand wrapped around a cold beer, and I'd recommend you make the effort too.

Bermuda Groove

I've never spent that much time on MySpace, due to the facts that I'm not a musician and Facebook is simply much better for communication, so when an artist makes the effort to send a message I tend to pay them the courtesy of a quick listen. Which is how I came to know Bermuda Groove.

They describe themselves as an "indie rock band", which is just so boring - there are at least 250,000 words in the English language and something like a trillion bands that describe themselves this way - but their music holds more promise. However, 'Waiting for a sound' is how I'd put it too.

They've put together some confident and well performed tracks, but they're still playing what they've heard with their ears, rather than what they hear in their heads. Shades of Thin Lizzy and Guns n Roses are apparent on their tracks, but the classic rock and roll influence props up something that's fundamentally quite mainstream and unchallenging.The lyrics to 'State of Mind' are a string of rock cliches, and the title alone tells you what to expect from 'She Don't Love You'.