JJ Rane – Back Into The River

JJ Rane – Back Into The River – EP Review

All the way over in Victoria, BC, you say?  I’ve taken that ferry ride just a few hundred times myself!

Rockin’ with that ‘Pacific Northwest’ sound according to JJ Rane’s bio online.  For a second there, I was like, wait…is that really a thing?  Aren’t we an amalgamation of so many other things?  I felt inclined to agree with him though after I pushed play and the sound of his title-track started booming back at me.  If anything, I think the first thought I had in terms of my own initial impression of JJ, was like, I’ll be damned if this probably wouldn’t be one of the perfect voices to cover a Mark Lanegan tune…and that’s about as Pacific Northwest as it can get in many ways.  Rane’s doin’ his own thing, don’t get me wrong – I’m just saying I can hear he’d be able to nail a great Lanegan cover if he were to choose the right song.

Anyhow.  I could probably make a stronger argument that JJ might even sound more close to something like Brother Cane than anything else if we’re looking at the grand scope of things to sum up his new EP, and they come from like, what…Alabama?  We all end up becoming a sum of our influences and the various things we’ve heard throughout the years I suppose…and I’m sure we’ll get into this a bit more as this review goes on.  I have no definitive proof as to where his influences come from; I just call things like I hear’em, and at the very least, it seems like many of’em come from the same era of the 90s and its sonic palette.  After sounding for a second like he was gonna bust into a new Rock rendition of “Faith,” JJ takes a significant turn into the wide open to expand the depths of sound on “Back Into The River” with immediate impact.  The backing vocals play a major part in keeping this track potent in the vocal department, but make no mistake, the lead from the man himself is also powerfully engaging, skilled, and spot-on with his tone.  You can tell in listening to a track like “Back Into The River” that JJ was born to rock…this appears to be his debut EP from what I can see online, but there’s no getting to this point in a music career without some extensive experience.  Dude’s rocking with the respectable tightness that a veteran of the scene would be making, so we gotta assume he’s honed his chops somewhere along the way…but in any event, “Back Into The River” makes it crystal clear you’ll be in for a stellar ride through this whole EP.  First impressions always count, and there’s no doubt that JJ Rane makes a great one.

If you’re looking for the more straightforward ROCK tune you’re gonna hear on the EP, it’s “Hell Of A Lie” without question.  This has got that extra slickness you’d find in something like Velvet Revolver or something with Scott Weiland up front in a post-STP scenario.  While I’ve mentioned before that I’m not always too partial to that particular sound…I dunno…call me crazy, but I really dig what I hear in “Hell Of A Lie” and I’d be willing to bet this becomes a MASSIVE highlight when being played live, every single time.  Like, when you think about songs that are truly built for the stage, you can mentally picture songs like “Hell Of A Lie” that possess these exact dynamics.  The music is gripping, the vocals are stellar, the energy steals the show – “Hell Of A Lie” is smart songwriting 101, and guaranteed to get the attention of anyone within earshot.  Equally clever, is the way the set-list of songs flows throughout this whole EP – “Back Into The River” is an excellent opening tune, filled with interesting ideas & enticing texture to it, but at the same time, it still leaves some room on the table to amp-up whatever comes next and take the EP to a whole other level energy-wise, which “Hell Of A Lie” has absolutely no problem doing.  The audible form of ‘hold my beer’ – “Hell Of A Lie” goes on to drop the people’s elbow on the opening cut and make a bold statement on behalf of the heat JJ is capable of creating with the crunch of his music.

“In The Middle Of Two Worlds” branched out a bit from the ol’ Pacific Northwest to expand Lane’s sound into…what…the mid-west?  Where’s Minneapolis?  Is that mid-west?  That’s what I’m going for – “In The Middle Of Two Worlds” plays more like a really intense Soul Asylum song…or like, a Soul Asylum song crossed with the DNA of the Mayfield Four.  Where does that band come from?  Looks like Boston.  Alright…so…Pacific Northwest vibes with a bunch of extra geographical highlights to be found in its frosted tips – how about that?  Anyhow…you get the point, this track’s a bit more of a hybrid, but that’s the right spot you wanna find yourself in right now in today’s world.  The more you can find your way to the fringe, the more opportunities open up, the more people you can play with, the more places you can play – the benefits are endless.  You gotta love the hooks that are beaming outta the guitar tones on this one though, right?  Good lord!  I’m all about’em!  To me, what you’ll hear in the music plays just as much of a part in why you’ll remember this track as anything you’ll hear coming outta the microphone for sure.  I suppose it’s fair to say that “In The Middle Of Two Worlds” doesn’t quite possess the heights of the energy you just experienced with “Hell Of A Lie,” but it’s by no means any kind of flat-line either.  “In The Middle Of Two Worlds” might even be a genuine reference to compromise in that regard – it’s like this song finds the bridge between how JJ wants to rock, but does it all in a way that feels brilliantly universal…as in, the masses would absolutely listen to this, and love it just as much as he does himself.  I really feel like the guy should be proud of this EP – I’ll spoil it for you in advance & tell ya that, if there was something he could have somehow done better throughout this whole lineup of songs, I never heard it.  I mean…I COULD (and I suppose I will) pick on the man for fading out “In The Middle Of Two Worlds,” but like, I used to know the precise spot on a blank cassette that you had to start fading out a mix tape too…so…take it with a grain of salt.  It’s something that used to be done all the time, and kinda feels a bit out of place in this modern-day era we’re all in now.  No use splitting hairs that fine though – I love “In The Middle Of Two Worlds” and felt like after hearing the first three tracks on this EP, it was gonna be extremely tough to determine what my favorite is, or if all the songs would tie for first place.

I feel like there’s a lot of me that wants to advocate on behalf of “Wake Up” being the best song on the record…or like, perhaps the most satisfying track to listen to in terms of its completeness all-around.  I’m sure I could make an argument that other cuts on this EP have more significant hooks that’ll grab your attention at first…but I think what I’m getting at is that “Wake Up” has all the hallmarks of a song that’ll long outlive us all.  Like, you could put this track on ten years from now and it’ll still sound every bit as fresh, inspired, and tight as it does now.  I’m assuming what’s riffing out in the background layers of this track is still guitar, yes?  I suppose it could be duplicated synthetically somehow, but that doesn’t strike me as the route that JJ would have gone, especially considering his talent on the axe – so…consider me kind of in awe…I don’t know if he’s looped that acoustic riff or whatever, and I don’t even know that I actually care all that much – it’s in the mix, and it’s an amazing part of “Wake Up.”  Do I think there was some room to bump that up a little bit in the volume department and feature that highlight a little bit more than he has?  Absolutely.  But I’ll also take what I can get.  Like I said, it’s in there, and you can hear it really clearly when the dynamics shift and the song moves into its more spacious moments.  The dual set of lead vocals on this track was also a very smart addition…I don’t know who’s responsible for’em, but I absolutely love what I hear out of everything happening on the microphone on “Wake Up.”  I suppose I look at it this way…it feels like there’s a bit more complexity and a bit more involved in the making of “Wake Up” to the rest by comparison…a bit more fluctuation in the dynamics between the way it shifts so seamlessly between the light and the dark of its sound…it has a great way of making everything we hear really stand out and find its maximum potential.  As cool as the music is (and boy-o, it IS) – I feel like what might also give “Wake Up” the edge is how much the vocals stand out for all the right reasons and have their most significant highlight in this set of songs as well.  I ain’t gonna lie to ya though, you could pick any element of this song and feel like it generated a memorable highlight, because it’s built with bulletproof songwriting & executed with the high standards required to get the best out of every moment.  Professionalism…that’s what you’re really hearing in this track overall.

“Back Into The River II” (Alternate Version) – lemme see, lemme see…what do I really think here, and does this second appearance somehow skirt around how I feel about songs being featured twice on one record?  Hmmmm.  Not really, no…I still think I feel how I feel.  As I tend to explain in these situations, it’s obvious that you’ve got a solid song you believe in when you end up having it appear two times in the span of one album or EP – we can assume that visually before we even hear it, and usually it only takes us pushing play before we confirm that for a fact.  Where I feel like the mistake is made though, is that gold is supposed to be precious, is it not?  Whenever we end up putting that one song in a lineup in there twice, we’re not only visually directing people to pay attention to it, but we’re also audibly not giving people all that much choice either.  It’s like we’re all supposed to fall in line and believe that this is THE cut of all cuts, and I don’t really think that’s always the case…in fact, read my thoughts on “Wake Up” in this very review and you’ll know that I don’t.  Beyond that though, let’s just assume you’re right and that it is THE cut of all cuts – unless you’re making significant changes to it, as in, it’s basically a totally different tune altogether by the second version you hear, then you’re absolutely risking watering down the impact that your greatest song could potentially make on us, or that it could wear out faster in a 2:1 ratio than the rest of the set!  I get the temptation to include a great track twice – don’t get me wrong, I get it, I get it…I’m simply laying out the case as to why artists/bands are actually taking a bigger chance with what’s perceived to be their best material than they might realize.  I don’t know that I heard enough of a difference in the second appearance of “Back Into The River” at the end of the EP, and of course, if you’re looping things around to repeat’em, you’re listening to the same song back-to-back with every subsequent spin.  Sure, there are some noticeable differences, but largely what we remember from the opening track and what made it memorable is retained, which makes “Back Into The River II” kind of a cover of itself, you feel me?  At first, it’s no problem, because this EP is new to all of us, and we’re all into what JJ has put into this record – I’m not disputing that – but come back to me in about five years down the road, and tell me I wasn’t right about the wear & tear of a song appearing twice in a short span of time, and/or how “Wake Up” is probably the track you still reach for at that point in the future.  I’ll take another round of “Back Into The River” with “Back Into The River II” at the end, because it IS a great song, and while the EP is still essentially new to me, it’s holding up real nice and generates a reliable finale to what’s been a solid set of tunes from start to finish.  I’ll put it to ya this way – after listening to Back Into The River over the course of this week, I have no worries about JJ Rane – this dude’s gonna be out there rocking the scene for years and years to come without a doubt, and I fully expect that he’s always going to create incredibly engaging and exciting songs like he has on this EP.

Find out more about JJ Rane from this handy multi-link right here:  https://snd.click/r6vp

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