As the saying goes, the second album is the most difficult. When it comes to indie rock with a specific edginess, the band Sex Jams have set the bar extremely high with their debut album “Post Teenage Shine” in 2010 and are now ready to deliver their next big hit. Listening to the new songs from the highly anticipated second output “Trouble, Honey” (Siluh Records), you may, or rather you have to, come to the conclusion that the five musicians have truely succeeded in their venture. Frontwoman Katarina Trenk and her band colleagues deliver tracks that rock your socks off, without, and this is the particular strength of this band, ever sounding disposable or trivial. Sex Jams have their own style, and even if this time they have moved closer to pop music structures, their music still has a high level of maladjustment, which is a breath of fresh air in the context of conventional and otherwise fabricated indie rock.
Sex Jams has always been a combo that swims against the tide. Coming from the hard-core environment, the band has always tried to realize a unique version of indie rock. A version that, despite the growing affinity for catchy melodies, ultimately always sounds a bit rougher, more maladjusted and noisier than others. This has not changed with “Trouble, Honey”. The new songs still sound far from smooth productions, reek of proper punkish attitude and remind you of the late 80s and early 90s underground garage feeling à la Sonic Youth and Rites Of Spring. The biggest difference to the first album is perhaps that the five-membered band sounds more structured and organized, possibly due to new routines learned during numerous live performances.
But fear not, the Sex Jams wouldn’t be the Sex Jams, if they would have sacrificed this development for the sake of their established radical expression. A convergence to any hip or fashionable mainstream sound is fortunately still out of question. In the wide spectrum of of pop music fierceness, the Sex Jams are still more likely to be settled in the energetic and boisterous area. Whatever style you may ultimately come up with to categorize the Sex Jams, it basically doesn’t matter. Whether post-hardcore pop, noise-pop or alternative-indie-punk-something, Sex Jams deliver great songs that thrill, rock and inspire. And this is precisely the case with “Trouble, Honey”.
Michael Ternai
translated from German
(Photo: Johannes Staudenbauer)
Upcoming Shows:
Check artist website for international concerts.
Link:
www.sexjams.net