John and Jehn - John and Jehn (Universal)
3/5
By: Sophie Dodds
On the basis of this debut alone, you might be forgiven for assuming that John and Jehn (hailing from France but currently based in London) amount to little more than a remarkable triumph of style over substance. Whilst they are undoubtedly arresting in their appearance -all pale-skined, skeletal suavity, something akin to Wednesday and Lurch Adams made over for a photoshoot in French Vogue - on record this fails to translate and their louche, limp-wristed pop offers only a fraction of their visual appeal.
A propos to their aesthetic, theirs is a skinny, stripped down sound -malnourished guitars brandished over the simplest of programmed beats, enlivened by the occasional burst of synth, harmonica or glockenspiel, hanging from the bones of minimally simple two or three chord song-structures. A tinge of the gothic creeps through in a predilection for the minor key, as well as in John's atonal droning and Jehn's vaguely demented hollar. The album is structured around the idea of a dialogue between the two halves, or 'EPs', entitled 'John' and 'Jehn' respectively. If the atmospheric and the spectral feature more heavily on John's half, Jehn's can boast the stronger melodies, including the almost-catchy '20h07'. However, there is, by and and large, little to distinguish between the two sections as the album saunters nonchalantly through 10 tracks of stripped-down blues-pop, at once arch and naïve, languishing in its own inscouciant chicness, redeemed only by its admitted idiosyncracy and a touching degree of lyrical sincerity.
The excitement the duo have managed to generate in the run up to this release must be accredited entirely to their live shows, which are an altogether more red-blooded affair. On stage they are compelling, insistent and surprisingly intense, stoking the atmosphere slowly but steadily over the course of a set with a heady mix of sexual and artistic chemistry. In the flesh (if that is the right expression) they are not so much the chiselled monochromatic beauties of their album inlay as endearingly gawky, at once youthful and haggard. It is regrettable that so little of this has been translated onto the album, but -as any who have been confronted with both sides of this paradox would probably agree- for the meantime they have earned themselves the benefit of the doubt.
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