Eskimo Joe - Black Fingernail, Red Wine

In my personal opinion one of the greatest attributes to Australian music is Eskimo Joe. If you're thinking 'I never knew the Inuit lived in Australia' then you probably aren't acquainted with the band. For those who have previously known Eskimo Joe you then know that they were formed in 1997 by Kavyen Temperley, Joel Quartermain Stuart MacLeod.

Eskimo Joe though successful in their own right are by no means a phenomenon or a high selling band, however when does chart performance ever dictate quality?

Something about Eskimo Joe just draws you towards in some sense a darkness. They recent production heavily emphasize darker themes such as death, war etc and their award winning release in 2006 Black Fingernails, Red Wine marks the genesis of this.

The album is an intricate, dark and grungy collection of songs, which though fairly dark shows glimmers of hope. Aesthetically speaking the album is ladled with rhythmic guitar rifftings, grungy lyrics, and weird and wonderful melodic line that on paper don't seem to make sense but just work somehow. Though first impressions of the music maybe be that of repetition and mono-tonality I promise that the music grows on you at least partially .

For me at least, the album is sooooo wonderfully dark, it somehow just reminds me of grunge itself(not musically speaking) the sound of the album somehow comes together in a very gloomy way. At times the album just seems to grip something dark within you(hope that doesn't sound too emo!). For me Black Fingernails, Red Wine a very gripping, engaging collection of music.

I think the main problem of the album is a lack of change, it seems that after the first few songs it just get unreasonable repetitive, I know I am contradicting myself by saying this but it does happen. Leaving the album somewhat incapacitated to evolve or change such as UTIS (which I have previously reviewed which changed it up abit).

In conclusion though having a brilliant start Black Fingernails, Red Wine finishes poorly in comparison to its glorious beginnings, though saying that by no means discount the validity of the piece because when Black Fingernails, Red Wine is good it's is really good.

Listen To: Comfort You, New York, Black Fingernails, Red Wine and Sarah