Album Review

Ji – Trees – EP

• 6th Sep 2007

Riffs a plenty and a ridiculously big sound made ‘Tree’ an absolute pleasure of a listen. The magic of MySpace informs me that this band is in fact only a three piece, but I don’t know whether I’m having it, not a bit of it. The well turned out short collection of stuff I received had me taken aback by the well thought out plethora of rock that it crammed into four short songs, all carrying a definite style but each a little different.

The trio seem to have mastered a beast of a sound compiling concrete riffs with bass-lines like kitkat chunky’s. If the songwriting occasionally steers a little towards clichéd power rock of decades gone by it is forgiven in the midst of a good riff and a rock-a-long melody that keeps this EP energetic to the point where it’s relentless. As far as rock and roll goes Ji tick most of the boxes, whilst ‘Tree’ and ‘Hey Rosa May’ are kicking all kinds of hiney, ‘Kiss of Life’ is a little beauty to follow the beast. There’s an instrumental proficiency that goes a long way to making these songs what they are, none more so obvious than in ‘Little Lights’, and whilst subject matter and lyric could be forgettable the sonic bollocks of Ji render the later point unimportant. The Ji Tree has me dead excited, here’s hoping it grows.