David Adamson, who went by Grampall Jookabox on 2008’s messy but promising Ropechain, has made some changes since his last outing. This time around things are consistently darker, percussive and industrial. Of course, Adamson’s sound is still hard to pin down. He dabbles in hip hop, folk and electronica, kind of like Beck with more backbone and a shorter attention span. And although his songs have more coherence on Dead Zone Boys, he’s still as unpredictable and spastic as he was on Ropechain. Jookabox offers a more cinematic approach: instead of a random smattering of ideas, what we have here is a low budget horror-movie soundtrack. Dead Zone Boys starts strong. The bombastic “Phantom Don’t Go” and its doppelganger “Don’t Go Phantom” are an appropriately off-kilter beginning for an album devoted to the living dead. But midway through the album the quality of Adamson’s material begins to wane. The flat “Zombie Tear Drops” is uncharacteristically boring, and Adamson is still stuck on Alvin and the Chipmunks-style vocal manipulation for some reason. Jookabox still has a lot of wild, unharnessed energy, but it could be better spent. (Asthmatic Kitty, www.asthmatickitty.com) Jonathan Dyck
Winnipeg music & culture since 1989