Tuesday, December 3, 2013

CD Review: Jupiter in Velvet - Shut Off Your Mind


Note: This review originally appeared in the Illinois Entertainer.

When a singer-songwriter elects to go by the name Jupiter in Velvet, it’s like a calling card. You just know this London-based artist is totally into glam rock. The brash vocals on his second effort, Shut Off Your Mind, are tailor-made for the genre, and he creates layers of guitars to back his streetwise observations. The obvious role model here is David Bowie, so when Jupiter in Velvet covers “Starman” toward the end of Shut Off Your Mind, it makes perfect sense.

Jupiter in Velvet finds imaginative and often blunt ways to express his need for affection or to escape the ignorance he finds running rampant in modern society. “I’m just so bored with the scene these days,” he complains above the steady beat of “The Deeper Side,” and on the high energy “Drops Of Love” he sings, “I know you think I’m strange and demure/Yea I’m a different cup of tea that’s for sure.” Shut Off Your Mind is a raucous party from start to finish, and Jupiter in Velvet wraps things up with his own off-kilter version of national pride, “All The Way With The UK.”

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