The Nine Lives of the Parachute Tester - Joe Banana and His Bunch

Three piece indie math lite group with a lot of potential. These guys have fairly straight forward structures but truly excel with excellent vocals and some pretty inspired and sprightly drumming.  All in all these three songs showcase their strengths incredibly well with my only minor gripe being that I wished the girl would sing more. I can truly appreciate a group that puts actual time into their vocal contributions because lets face it a lot of math (or even indie rock groups for that matter) have a very slap dash approach to writing lyrics and vocals melodies. As stated this is not at all the case here. Best of luck to these guys and very excited to see where a full length will take them.

Joe Banana and His Bunch!

The Samuel Jackson Five - The Samuel Jackson Five (2012)

Previously on plentyofswords...

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Our Norway Post-Rockers finally return after 2008's stunning Goodbye Melody Mountain. Always Samuel Jackson Five one up's themselves with each release and continually stands ahead of the pack.  This time around we find them more willing to branch out and even to add vocals to a few of the songs (as much they had hinted at before the release)  The standard's are there for sure gorgeous lead lines, technical songwriting (without using the p-word...prog) and interesting juxtaposition of instruments. It does seem that the jazz elements of past have taken a bit of a back seat to my dismay. However the quality of the songs are not effected by this. Is this the best SJ5 release? ehhh i wouldn't be so sure to say and honestly each one before has always taken a bit to sink in for me. Know this though that there isn't a person out there that shouldn't give it a crack. There really are so many things to love about these guys.

Samuel Jackson Five (2012)