Review Jojo - s/t 2011

Tracks
1. Extasy
2. The First Will Be The Last
3. I Can Wait
4. Woman’s Touch
5. Running Thru’ The Night
6. Diana
7. So Long
8. Hold Back The Night
9. Love Is Like Water
10. Water To Wine
11. Remember Me
BONUS TRACKS:
12. Let’s Rock The Shelter
13. You Can Fly
14. Call Me Now (feat. Mr. Voice)
15. How Does It Feel 16. Extasy
17. Stand Together

Band:
Robby Musenbichler - vocals
George Liszt - vocals
Roko Kohlmeyer - vocals
Ken Taylor - bass
Lothar Krell - keyboards
Curt Cress - drums
Chris Schneider - saxophon

Discography:
Debut

info:
Produced by Eddy Offort

guests

Released 14/10-2011
Reviewed 10/11-2011

Links:
robbymusenbichler.com
yesterrock

Twice jo make Jojo I guess, formed by Robby from Tokyo this was a project that seems to have lasted for one album called the same as the band, which is what is being re-released now many years later. It is the original album with six bonustracks so you get a lot of tracks for your money. The worth and the quality is hard to judge from just looking at the cover and judging by the cover of this album you can clearly judge that it will be a very uninteresting album. Fortunately I do not judge an album by its cover, Jojo is compared with AOR greats like Toto or Journey in the press information, they shared the stage with Scorpions during the German Rock Awards or something in that fashion was the name of the awards thing and Jojo was entertainment there according to the same press information. I have not been album to find much info on this but from reading it would appear as though the band was moderately successful with this one album.

Musically we will recognise what we get here, the style reminds of typical melodic rock, with clear and catchy choruses and a generally melodic disposition it is hard to say it would be something different than that. The band has three different singer which is something that is not really obvious and I can’t tell if they sing on different tracks or share the same tracks, so much do you notice it. The songs are rather varied in style making this album quite diverse, the use of saxophone is a thing you will notice as well during many of these varied style songs. It is an album that sports seventeen tracks of which six are bonus tracks so you see the album was not really that short to begin with, the playing time is a little more than one hour.

I think this is a quite good album, the songs work well in general and some of them are very good. Songs like Extasy, Running Thru’ the Night and Diana are standout tracks that gets on you mind very easily. But it is not only those tracks as the rest are also quite good, most of them are at least, there are some not so great songs like the two tracks that end the original album which are actually quite boring songs and then there are one or two of the bonus tracks that aren’t that impressive either. But the general feel is positive as most of the music is really good.

I think though as Steve Hackett told me, “if you get such a thing right you can be sufficiently entertaining to be coherent. Otherwise it can be very tiring for the listener” and I think that Jojo does not quite get it right with this album and it becomes tiring because it is a bit incoherent. The songs don’t quite fit together and the further towards the end you get the more tiresome it becomes, which is a bit of a shame because most of the songs are very good.

In the end I think that the album is a bit too much, the bonus tracks feels a tad indifferent to me and the album in its original presence is already a tad long as it is so they feel a bit like overkill to be honest. The best tracks are however really good and the feeling when hearing tracks like for instance extasy is just great as it is a great track but the songs just feels too different to one another that the overall impression turns more and more from a very positive one towards an indifferent feel to the whole thing. So I would say that it is a good album but they should have lost some of the songs as it becomes a bit indifferent when the album starts feeling incoherent.

HHHHHHH

Jojo s/t

Jojo
s/t