Jeff Martin And Steven Padin - The First Joke And Other Matters (Review)

Artist: Jeff Martin And Steven Padin
Album: The First Joke And Other Matters
Label: Independent
Release Date: January 19^th
Genre: Indie/Acoustic
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Rating:

The depar­ture of the band This Day & Age back in 2006 left a void the size of the Bermuda Triangle. When an artist releases their best work (see: The Bell and The Hammer), then irrev­er­ently severe ties, it leaves a per­ma­nent blotch in the fan’s heart. The won­der­ful thing about modern-day music is that the album is still just as good as the first moments of lis­ten­ing; not a fad­ing facade left as just a mem­ory. Nonetheless, This Day & Age has not fully returned, but two for­mer mem­bers of the band, Jeff Martin (vocalist/guitarist) and Steven Padin (drums) decided to col­lab­o­rate song­writ­ing ideas. The out­come is expressed in their recently released LP The First Joke and Other Matters.

Using min­i­mal­ist sym­phonic ideals fused with won­der­fully sim­ple acoustic arrange­ments circa Sufjan Stevens’ Seven Swans, Jeff Martin and Steven Padin bril­liantly dis­play their vet­eran song­writ­ing abil­i­ties. During the first track “Page in Book”, it’s imme­di­ately appar­ent how much the world of music was miss­ing dur­ing Jeff’s depar­ture from con­tem­po­rary music. The melodies are an oxy-moronic mix­ture of atmos­pheric and com­plex yet lov­ably sim­ple. That is a nod to the pro­duc­tion as well as the musi­cian­ship. His voice is wel­come and com­fort­ing like a father telling a bed-time story to his children.

While Jeff con­tributes to roughly half of the album, the other half is writ­ten pri­mar­ily by Steven. The dif­fer­ences in song­writ­ing styles are almost as clear as night and day. Jeff’s songs lean more towards allow­ing the atmos­pheric lay­ers to cre­ate the land­scape; Steven is more for cre­at­ing the lay­ers him­self by using more abstract instru­men­ta­tion. “Perelandra” is the first track to be heard of Steven’s half, and begins with the sounds of elec­tronic replace­ment of a bass drum, then heads straight to an intri­cate acoustic melody and quickly adds a touch of synth to boot. Steven’s vocals are a won­der­ful sur­prise. Although he’s not nearly as sea­soned of a vocal­ist as Jeff, he still can hit the right notes at just the right times. The cur­rent drum­mer of indie-jazz out­fit The Reign of Kindo clearly dis­plays his ver­sa­til­ity as a musician

The First Joke and Other Matters is a ter­rific album; with­out ques­tion. A reunion of This Day & Age is cer­tainly wel­come, but this serves as a nice replace­ment to fans of the for­mer indie/emo rock­ers. The flow of the album isn’t as swift as it could’ve been due to the split song­writ­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties, but maybe the goal was to remain slightly unbal­anced to rock the boat. Either way, the album is a won­der­ful treat for the ears.

Track Listing:
1. Page In Book
2. Perelandra
3. In This Story
4. Farewell, The Company
5. Forrest (Forest)
6. Winston Was Here
7. Look Me Listen, Listen Me Look
8. Smile, Future
9. Note to Friends
10. Runway

Similar To: This Day & Age, The Reign of Kindo, Sherwood

Review by: Kyle L.