Block
Timing Is Everything (Java/Capitol)
by Jamie Kiffel
Cruising musically from malls to urban apartments to a suggested cocktail for suburban stress relief (“Cigarettes, Prozac and Scotch”), Block smartly and sharply provides a soundtrack to the great tack that is America in the 1990s. Jamie Block’s voice is clear and frank, verging on comical for its unenhanced nakedness in the midst of a culture gone mad. That is, it’s a misplaced, funny thing to discover vocal humanity in all this. It is their frankness, in addition to exotically excellent, sitar-enhanced funk, buzz-folk guitar, and cheese-free rap additives, which allows Block to get away with the kind of tangle-tongued lyrics that other bands attempt to sell as mystique. Block, with true folk brazenness, proves unafraid to belt lines like “Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day.” The trick is that the tunes maintain real rock integrity.
(www.capitolrecords.com)