Jury And The Saints Self Titled Release Demands Involvement

A band that keep proving themselves through their studio work and on the stage, New Zealand Punk enthusiasts ‘Jury and the Saints’ return from their 2010 release of ‘Daydreams’ to bring you the infectious compilation that is their self-titled second album.

 

Crowd-based call and response anthems mixed with a party-hard attitude really sets an example of how to make a soundtrack that puts you in the front row of a show directly from your living room. A theory to blend a sub-conscious visual performance into the music has been proven very possible when listening to the 12-song soundtrack. Transported to the front row of a gig like a virtual reality, you stand there with a half-empty drink in one hand and the other thrashing uncontrollably in the direction of the brightly-lit stage, waiting for the sensation of the inner-punk to boil over until your screaming loud and proud that “this is who I am and nothing else matters”.

Although playing large festivals is an undeniable way of publicising a musician’s music to a flood of possible fans, the bands sound strike me as something to be shared in an unpretentious, back to basics, rock bar stage performance instead of a huge event appearance. Not that they wouldn’t be able to handle a crowd of that magnitude, (which they have proved countless times in the past to have the ability to do) but because their new work almost demands a crowd that become involved in unison instead of a nervous few rows behind the stage barrier.

Regardless of slowly generating a large name for themselves in the punk rock scene, the new soundtrack would sit perfectly with a 300-400 capacity location where the crowd can drink, headbang, go nuts and generally form a relationship within close proximity of the band instead of somewhere which borders on an absurd scale of attendees who may not appreciate the set.

This raw rendition of scraping guitar strings and ripping drum skins translates as something very personal to the musicians and ever so obvious that resisting the temptation of over-editing in the studio is not as difficult as most artists would assume. Blazing a trail with their post-hardcore veracity, the Auckland quartet are burning up the tick sheet for any form of uptown mainstream club acceptance and drowning the ashes in a keg of cold steinlager before handing it out to their already huge and unconventional fan base.

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Words by Nathan Roach

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