Jubal Cain - Current

Current marks Jubal Cain's major-label debut, if you consider their own self-financed Seathru Transparental
Records a major label. Although you don't , Jubal Cain doesn't mind a bit.

The collection began to grow legs while the band was recording what was then slated to be their "major-label
debut", The Sampler. Doing things in chronological order is not one of the band's strong suits, and that
includes playing chords and singing choruses.

The Ashworth-Patin-led conglomerate had already written a lengthy album of varied (and sometimes rather
abstract) material for The Sampler, but as co-Cain Derek Ashworth points out, "The songs we wrote for
that album had, for the most part, a verse-chorus-verse vibe, which we almost immediately dispensed with.
We began to write songs with no choruses, and the subject matter at least seemed to share some of what
Frank Zappa called Conceptual Continuity, where we had imagery that appeared in several songs. The
cardboard box, the bromide gas, a milking girl leading you down into fissures in the time-space continuum
beneath the Sidney Sherman Bridge. You know, all the basic rock and roll subject matter."

"It's a story about mental health."

But the album seems rather straightforward by the duo's own skewered standards.

"It's about growing up in the shadow of chemical refineries. And the mental health problems that may ensue."

Ashworth continues, "We thought we were making inpenetrable-type, avant-garde weird shit. But the way it
ended up, there's a Power Ballad, a Country-Rock Tune, some Emo-Wussy-type stuff, some 80's-style
Crap, and there's still room for a little Free-Form Jazz and Surrealist Dada."

Whether the listener gravitates to one or the other seems to be Jubal Cain's point. The band is content with
confusing listeners to the point of distraction with this montage of the mundane and the absurd. I liken the
listening experience of Current to walking into twelve different bars in one evening to hear live music. By the
time you are at the twelfth bar you might think you've already been there, but you're in no position to trust
your own judgment.

Give it a listen. But be sure to call a cab.

-Fabian Tristani
November, 2004