The Dance: Jimmy Gnecco

Photo Credit: April Bauer

“It’s about being beat down. The challenges in our society...coming back and finding the strength to fight again but without becoming a monster in order to survive in a world full of monsters." That's how Jimmy Gnecco describes his latest creation.

In 2013 a successful Pledge Music campaign resulted in the album Ballet The Boxer, 1 (One of 2013's 5 Albums You May Have Missed). As album titles go, it’s ambiguous at best. It connotes fighting for a more graceful way to exist and survive without the constant fight: physically or emotionally, as nations, as people. It’s a striking record, no pun intended.

However Jimmy Gnecco, the mastermind of that record and its title: not so ambiguous. The New Jersey native is a clear thinker, straight speaker and a captive of the human emotions which he translates via one of the more stunning and flexible voices in rock today. It’s entirely possible that you may be unfamiliar with this beautiful creature despite his very devoted following, despite his 20 years of music making, despite recording the track "Someone To Die For" with Brian May for the Spiderman 2 soundtrack, despite seven acclaimed albums (solo and with his band) and despite fronting the seminal rock outfit, OURS, with that emotive and soulful voice that can crush an octave until it weeps.

If for no other reason than the pure love of this thing called music, the art of vocal craft or how a great rock song gets beneath your skin, it’s in one’s best musical interest to dig into where his music has been and where it’s going. As a lyricist he is particularly gifted due to often being painfully acute in diagnosing what ails us. Always present have been personal and professional challenges; so life goes, and sourcing the pain and the pleasure has always been the genesis of transparent art. It’s just what he does. “There’s no real formula except what I’ve always tried to have present in the music is that human connection.” Jimmy explains. “The questions that we have, the things that we wonder about. The things that we hope for, the things that we are afraid of. Emotional. It’s very honest. It’s never, ever coming from a stand point of thinking what’s popular.”

Ballet... was of careful design. “When we put the record together, each song we loved for a certain reason because they served a certain part of the story. Without one, another might not mean as much.” The record is also as prime an example as any of emotional and honest- along with exceptional- alternative rock, as well as Jimmy’s command of fleshing out the beautiful and the ugly alongside the intense and the delicate. There’s always an elegant juxtaposition of light and the dark in the songs. “It’s just a natural thing that exists. For every way of looking at something in a beautiful way there’s another way of looking at it.” And Jimmy keenly focused on expressing both of those aspects on Ballet..., which he calls an album of two halves. “The first part of the record is supposed to make people feel that disconnect, discomfort at times. Almost this vindictive feeling. “Coming For You” is antagonistic: I’m coming for you, motherfucker, you better watch yourself.” Let’s be honest: sometimes you just want to swing at whatever is pushing you around. Only to have the second half of the album grasp at and for resolve with the dualistic "Fall Into My Hands."

"On the surface there’s this thing that’s very beautiful: if you’ve lost hope, I’m here. You can fall back and I’ll catch you." Yet there's just as much shadow play at work: "It’s kind of speaking from a devil’s point of view. If you waste the opportunity you’ve been given to make it a meaningful life full of love, you can choose to have it in your life, love and all this beauty or you can throw it all away and fall into my hands."

Although Jimmy admits, “There are some songs on this record that don’t get resolved and won’t get resolved until the next record.” File that away as something to look forward to.

Yes, that's David Carradine in what would be his final performance.

Musicians have various motivations for diving into their craft: fame, money, awards, tigers on a gold leash, an entourage, a house in the Hollywood Hills. Jimmy’s is a little off that beaten path and, again, wanders into the realm of connection. “Genuine conversations with people that were genuinely moved- I love that and I will always love that. It’s a very romantic idea to me, to sit in my bedroom or the car and I write a song, and these are your inner thoughts. You’re putting them down, put it on a record and you send it out to the world. It’s like sending out a note in a bottle and you always wonder who it’s going to reach. So when the music reaches people you want to know who it’s reached and how it’s affected them.” And standing on a stage feeding an audience powerful sound feeds him. A receptive listener open to being touched touches him and reinforces a very simple tenet.

“I have hope in people. You go out and somebody’s riding up your ass in your car and running you off the road, screaming at you and you get razzled, you wanna strangle somebody. And then you go away and you’re like ‘I can’t lose hope in people.’ You still have this love, ultimately it comes back to wanting to love, wanting to be loved.”

And there is the fragile ballet that the boxer in us all has to dance.

5 Albums You May Have Missed, Version 2013

Oh 2013, where have you gone? But gone she almost is so here I sit thinking about all the musical goodness that has passed us by.

Let's be honest: the last thing that anyone needs is yet ANOTHER fucking Best Of/Most Awesome Albums of 2013 list. I'm not into it. But what I am into is doing due diligence in pointing out what may have been overlooked amongst all the fawning over Yeezus. So here are five releases of particular note for particular reasons and I hope you'll dig into them.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club- Specter At The Feast
Released: March 19, 2013

The multiple personality of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s 6th release is exactly that: a release. Fitful, healing, aggressive, literate, complex, sonically graphic, as dark as it is light and together Peter Hayes, Robert L Been and Leah Shapiro stave off what could have been a full-fledged danse macabre by simply baring their rock and roll teeth (goddamn “Rival”) and sinking them in…hopefully not into one another because that would be weird. Specter... (Hayes and Been’s second album with Shapiro wo/manning drums) is the mark of a band realized; the band they need to be because this time around she fully imprints herself and her sound, which does nothing but complement her partners in rebellion (and a band is only as good as its drummer). It’s like nature at work, everyone plays their part. I’ll break it down for you. Specter... is a three-way of the elements: Hayes acts as Fire (he’s downright sexually menacing in the chaos of “Sell It”), Been counteracts as Water (peaceable and coolly pacifying) while Shapiro is all Earth and the strong foundation that supports them. It’s kinda beautiful, man.

Brendan James- Simplify
Released: August 6, 2013

In the vein of the singer/songwriter, Brendan James possesses the immense gift of being able to paint a lyrical picture and tell a story so vivid you can almost taste it. He's a New Hampshire native and his fourth album, Simplify, is ripe with what he specializes in: emotionally connected and connective piano driven moments of song that reflect his personal convictions. Whether he's singing about gun violence or divorce or conscious living, Brendan does it with elegant honesty and care. While the album is frontloaded and the pace tapers according to subject matter, according to Brendan, this album represents him "finding a clarity" he'd been searching for for years and I’m right there with him. Listen to “Hilary” (and yes, Brendan, one day that girl is going to figure out that this song is about her) and I dare you to try and NOT practically ‘see’ every word he says.

Javier Dunn- Trails
Released: June 25, 2013

For the past 10 years or so Javier Dunn has been the right hand guitar-man of singer-songtress Sara Bareilles but now he’s making music under his own steam and it sounds like that shyly confident romantic storyteller with a Taylor guitar on open mic night getting his synth-washed sexy back and phone numbers on cocktail napkins. Trails is all about the love journey and its potential, if not inevitable highs and pitfalls with an overlay of R&B groove and pop sense electronically tweaked- gently. With a few previously recorded songs re-imagined like “By The Sea” and “If You Go” (where homie Sara Bareilles adds sweet co-vocals making it a duet), put this album on and don’t be surprised if you get lucky. Way, way luckier than Daft Punk.

Ours- Ballet The Boxer I
Released: June 11, 2013

It's been five years since the last outing from this ridiculously underrated and under-known band: Ballet the Boxer I (which hopefully means that a sequel is enroute) from Ours takes a slight left turn from the preceding Mercy: Dancing For The Death Of An Imaginary Enemy. A touch more refined but no less consuming with its grandiosity and full blooded orchestrated rock. The band is tight (main man, Static, on guitar where he should be) and fronted by the glorious and iconic octaves of Jimmy Gnecco (whose lack of mainstream exposure is also criminal), this album is 10 tracks of Gnecco opening emotional veins and battling beautiful demons with his trademark vocal prowess. It's a self-imposed battle encompassing fragility and strength, from the title track to the heady and sensual stomp of “Pretty Pain,” the exorcising of "Devil" to the defiant, not taking any more shit “Stand.” But what seals the deal is the intensely powerful and redemptive closer “Fall Into My Hands” and you’ll totally want to. Fall into his hands, that is.

The Veils- Time Stays, We Go
Released: April 16, 2013

This album came out in April and by my third listen through, I knew it would be a year-end favorite. It's just that good. Working under the assumption that when Finn Andrews and his band entered the studio they did so with the expectation of making the best record of their career, Time Stays, We Go may be the Veils most satisfying output yet (or at least on par with Sun Gangs) and, with their fantastic and dramatic history, that's saying a lot: it's a beauty. Conveyance of delicacy and hope without diluting their typical visceral piss and dark fire is a tricky walk. One step too far left and we're in emo territory; to the right and it's annoying, angry angst where we have to start questioning penis sizes. By the end of the album's 40 minutes you feel as if you've trekked through some sort of beautiful wilderness as wide territory has been covered from ethereally romantic "Sign of Your Love" to the 50s retro and sexually anguished "Candy Apple Red".

Honorable Mentions:
Mona- Torches & Pitchforks
Papa – Tender Madness