JONATHAN KANE | JET EAR PARTY

By JONATHAN DONALDSON

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GENRE | BLUES TRANCE

VERDICT | EXTRA RAW

RELEASE | 6.30.09

LABEL | RADIUS

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Good art reveals itself with closer study. Jet Ear Party by Jonathan Kane (The Swans) reveals itself by playing off of a backdrop so utterly familiar that even the slightest variations transform the entire feel of his pieces. Kane's genre-sprawling blues-guitar playing, while not displaying any particularly dazzling virtuosity, is rooted in the curious paradox that while "less is more," five or six guitars playing the same riff (and subtle variations on the same riff) over and over again for upwards of 10 minutes is also more. If that sounds painful, it's absolutely not. Admittedly, Kane's slight of hand works better live, where he uses overtones, molded with a combination of skill and extreme decibels to introduce "sounds" into his compositions where they wouldn't exist at normal volumes. On a track like his non-cover of "Thank You (Fallettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)"—it sounds nothing like the original—Kane employs bagpipes toward the end of the song to approximate the raga-like tonalities that he gets out of guitar sonics in his live shows. Anyone who appreciates the blues' simplicity/complexity paradigm in action should listen.