ROBIN JAMES – Saint Jude

There are two things to note down about this one. Firstly, despite the very feminine sounding vocals Robin James is actually a guy, and secondly the best way to enjoy ‘Saint Jude’ is to simply not put it on. Seriously, it’s 32-minutes of life that are better spent on something more productive like watching paint dry or rounding up every possible copy of this CD, throwing it on a fire and watch, satisfied, as it burns. Each and every song, from St Jude to Love Song is full of the same whiney tones and the same pitifully quite guitar. Unsurprisingly the title track is depressing, helped leaps and bounds by its raw, unedited quality.
On the last track, ‘Lullaby’, Robin sings “…go to sleep now baby” and you know what, it’s hard to ignore him, the temptation to just close your eyes and drift off is almost overwhelming, but what’s the point, since ‘Lullaby’ is at the tail end of the depressing, seemingly everlasting storm, it would be a shame to not quite reach the finish line.
It smacks of arrogance and pretention that for his debut album Robin attempts to convey more feeling by recording straight to tape so that he cannot edit even if he wished to. The over confidence that he obviously has in his ability puts a whole lot of expectation on ‘Saint Jude’ that it just doesn’t live up to.
However the lack of editing is where the appeal lies. It is just man and his guitar, untarnished and pure. Not touched by complicated synths and crashing drums, instead breaking away from them in favour of simplicity. Yet, at least with other men and their guitars they had the decency to entertain their audience; at least they actually created songs that were not only fun to listen to but also as enjoyable the tenth time round as they were the first.