JCH (UK) - Painting By Numbers LP

Hear The Track Here

I don't know about you guys but every time I look at this artists name I see JPC (NZ) and that is not only a totally different artist but also the other side of the world. Still, I've always been a bit dic...dix....dicklex.....I have a problem with certain letters, especially one with brackets. JCH is not in fact a new name. Well, it IS of course, but maybe regular readers will be hearing bells from the title of this album. They know they've heard that title before but they just can't place it. Well, JCH in this case stands for James Crosbie Hancox, a Liverpudlian musician who has given us some very tasty tracks over the past year or so. You may also know that I have reviewed a few of the tracks on this album, but I am assured that they have changed since I last did this.

MmmmmmOK, let's see....

The premise of Painting With Numbers is that each track is made up of one chord, throughout the whole song. Sounds weird I know but it works surprisingly well although the production on several of the tracks I've reviewed often got in the way of the song. It actually takes a deal of skill to work like this though, so kudos to JCH for getting it right. Cradle To The Grave is the first track (and not one I've reviewed before) and a fine example to start with. Listening through to this excellent song, its hard to understand that all of this emotion comes from one chord. There again, I would imagine Joe Punter couldn't give a stuff how many chords a track contained, just whether or not it did the trick, and believe me Cradle To The Grave does that. Edge Junkie (September 2009) sounds a lot meatier than I remember, and that only helps to push across yet another excellent song.

By this stage, it will be obvious that - first and foremost - James is a songwriter, and a very good one at that. Put it like this, none of the tracks on this album suffer by being made up of one chord each, and are often quite different from track to track. Inbetweener (another track I hadn't heard before) shows just how good this musician can be and is arguably one of his best songs - and I've only heard this a few times by my standards. When I reviewed It's Just A Game (October 2009) I mentioned that the track lacked excitement and I don't feel that anymore. It's the perfect follow on from Inbetweener. I could go and number all the other tracks (did I say there were seven of them?) but I'd only be repeating myself. Truth is, taken as a whole like this, with those beefed up earlier tracks makes the whole project work so much better. All of the tracks are a free download on the webpage and I'd definitely recommend downloading the whole album and listen to it that way.

MUST HAVE alternative with a unique musical twist.