Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Jared Lekites - Love That Lasts

Hear The Track Here

'Jared Lekites' - it says here - 'is a singer/songwriter heavily inspired by the revolutionary music of the 60s'. Sounds good to me because I was too and that's never a bad sign, especially for a musician who is new to me. Certainly its a given that Jared Lekites is a name even a numbskull like me is going to remember. Not much to go on though, he's from the US, obviously into yer classic rock although Love That Lasts bears the dreaded 'folk' rock tag. Now personally, I have a lot of time for folk rock provided its more rock than folk, if you know what I mean. Most of the artists I really like on Soundclick divide their time between these two genres and pop - think Cameron Pierce and Cam's Even Song for two... However, there is a real fine line between what gets to me in this genre and what doesn't.

I can't say I am a big fan of the American brand of folk rock personified by John Denver and his ilk, although I like most of the close harmony folk rock bands the American West Coast specialised in. Much more to the point, as you also know, I cannot abide rock ballads because most quite simply don't work. End of story. The reason I am on this well beaten path, as you may suspect, is because Love That Lasts manages to straddle all of those points. Lyrically and musically this owes a lot the the Beatles in general and John Lennon in particular, especially in the arrangement and vocals.

It has to be said that Jared Lekites does a pretty decent job of it, my problem came because - to be honest - I don't particularly care for the style. What the track shows me is that Jared knows what he's doing and if the references I have given are of interest to you, listening to this will not be an onerous task. On the other hand, listen is all you can do with this track, or shell out .99c for your very own copy. On that score, it seems a 128k file and a decent (but not groundbreaking) song is a tad too high priced and may struggle to make any money whatsoever. There again, one of the beauties of Soundclick is that at least the option is there to sell tracks - whether or not any actually turn into cash.

Decent folk rock song a la Beatles.

1 comment:

Jared Lekites said...

Steve,

Thank you so much for your honest and informative review of "Love That Lasts". The Beatles/Lennon influence didn't even occur to me until halfway through the recording (months after the song had been written). I also agree that folk rock isn't the best category to fit this in to but it's the closest thing to 60's rock I could find on soundclick's list.
I hope to have more tracks to share with you soon!