Jem - It All Starts Here...

Introducing one of the recent crop of Welsh musicians to start making a splash, songstress Jem (Griffiths). You might recognize the name since she co-wrote “Nothing Fails” from Madonna’s last disc (or…maybe not). At any rate, she is about to release her own debut CD Finally Woken on March 23, 2004. In the meantime, Jem has put out It All Starts Here... as a five track EP to give us a little taste of what she has to offer. Jem’s song's, mainly involving low-tempo dance beats, are pretty easy to swallow. The sound reminds me of Dido but with a little more oomph and the melodies are catchy...so catchy, I’ve had one of the songs stuck in my head for the last week. Though you could be happy just bobbing along to the music, it’s worth it to take a listen to the lyrics too. Maybe I’m just getting cynical in my old age, but the line “Who made up all the rules? We follow them like fools. Believe them to be true. Don’t care to think them through” kinda made me smile. Sort of bouncy cynicism on the other side of wisdom, and I can get with that. Still, it’s hardly challenging. In what I assume is an attempt to show that Jem is more than just a hook and a catchy beat, the last track on the EP is an acoustic version of “Flying High.” Now, having never heard the non-acoustic version, I can’t fully judge, but I can tell you that I found it to be a huge buzz-kill at the end of what had been a very pleasant little collection. The lyrics could have been the most happy go lucky stuff in the world, but it sounded like a dirge, and I quickly eject the CD after track 4. Really, I’m hoping that they won’t feel the need to put any acoustic tracks on the full length offering. I’m interested enough to check out the full album when it makes its way to my local record shop, but I doubt I’ll notice if it doesn’t. [www.jem-music.net]