Jem
Paradise, Boston, Massachusetts
November 9, 2005
by Marc Hirsh
[photos
taken
by Marc Hirsh]
originally published in Amplifier, January-February 2006
It’s curious, really, to watch as Jem follows the same general career trajectory of Dido, the singer who she most clearly resembles. As if to say, “Well, if it worked for her…,” Jem’s songs have found their way onto numerous commercials and movies, much as Roswell appropriated “Here With Me” as its theme song and “Thank You” was converted from a grateful love song into the background music for a man killing his wife and blaming it on the celebrity he’s stalking.
Perhaps to avoid tempting fate, Jem is taking the
same slow-build
approach to selling her debut that Dido took. It’s unclear whether
she’ll be
touring behind her debut for four years like Ms. Armstrong, but almost
two years
removed from the release of Finally
Woken,
the Welshwoman’s set at the
Following an introductory recording of a men’s
chorus
singing “We’ll Keep A Welcome” (“This land you knew will still be
singing/When
you come home again to
Jem’s voice was slighter than on record, which she admitted was somewhat shot due to working hard recently (on what, she wouldn’t say). But for the slow, mournful “Missing You,” the feeling was clearly there even if her voice wasn’t completely up to the task, and her breathiness worked in the favor of “Flying High,” in which the minor flaws of her singing provided her with a vulnerability that played well off of the simple acoustic guitar accompaniment.
The rest of the time, it was clear enough to be noticed but minor enough not to be a problem, and the crowd came awfully close to honoring Jem’s plea to pretend that it was a Saturday night instead of a Wednesday. Best of all, there wasn’t a moment when she wasn’t relaxed, confident and full of good humor, especially during a sympathetic and surprisingly straightforward cover of “Sweet Home Alabama” (Wales being the British equivalent to Hicksville, you see). At the end of the night, she produced the Finally Woken songbook and had Thompson start playing the final song from the published arrangement. After a few bars of what Omnibus Press Music Sales thinks “They” sounds like, the band kicked in and nearly overwhelmed Jem in the best possible way, as she swam her way through a chorus that sounded more apocalyptic than she was able to muster in the studio. After nearly two years of flogging the same album, it was a pleasure to hear that she hadn’t tired of her material but was still finding new avenues to explore inside of it. Dido did the same thing.
