A different side of a familiar coin…
Last week, I finally picked up an album I had long ago meant to grab: Joe Hedge’s Curvature. The name might seem familiar to some of my friends, and that’s because he is. Joe is the vocalist/songwriter behind the band July for Kings. Breaking up after their Nostalgia EP in 2006 after a major label run with their debut album Swim, Joe decided to go solo. And with that, he released Curvature.
The thing is, whenever there’s a side-project or something different from a band, you expect that when its the lead singer or someone signature to the band, that it’ll sound like what you expect the band to do. Examples? Rob Thomas solo still has that Matchbox 20 vibe, Joe Perry has that heavy balls-to-the-floor blues that he brings to Aerosmith, and when you pried Slash away from G’n'R, you got the same thing in Velvet Revolver riff-wise. Now granted, there are the exceptions to that rule like Sebastian Bach, Tom Morello, and Angels & Airwaves (which to be fair isn’t Blink at all, but still).
And Joe is definitely an exception to the rule. The best way to do this is for you to take a quick jaunt over and listen to JfK’s “Normal Life” and then when you’re done, the first single solo called “Mitral Valve Prolapse.”
You’re back? Good.
See, Joe’s solo album is more ambient and melodic. JfK was a lot more alt rock. That being said, the songwriting has the same level of intensity and it ties it together beautifully. If you’re a fan of JfK, as a lot of my friends became with my constant goading towards their music and me playing “Normal Life” at a good number of open mics, I’d recommend picking it up and being on the look out for the reunion album that JfK will hopefully be releasing by the end of the year…
