On Jim Blaha's first two albums under the moniker
Jim and the French Vanilla, the formula was simple -- Blaha cutting angular pop tunes in his bedroom, lo-fi style, with an acoustic guitar, some percussion pieces, and a four-track cassette machine. For his third time at bat, Blaha has taken a somewhat different approach; 2017's
Afraid of the House is an electric affair, with Blaha turning up his amp and bashing at a full drum kit in a bare-bones rock & roll session. This is still very much a homemade album, and it sounds like it, full of overblown tape distortion and occasionally iffy fidelity overall. But Blaha has also been working on his hobbyist production skills, and the jittery vocal sound on "Eye for an Eye," the heavily processed acoustic tone on "Not Even War," and the junkshop keyboards on "Lonely Man" all help make this a more interesting bit of listening than either Roll Out the Candy or II. Of course there's only so far you can go with a project like
Jim and the French Vanilla, and
Afraid of the House is a still a set of 11 rudimentary tunes built around chugging power chords that zip by in roughly 27 minutes. Despite that, there is a sense of freedom and mischief here that's not always present in Blaha's work with his main band,
the Blind Shake. And the songs may be compact but they get over, and the garagey minimalism of "When You're Down," "Back Home," "Take It to the Grave," and "Grow Like Rabbits" works in a way that a more ambitious production might not.
Afraid of the House sometimes sounds like something Jim Blaha knocked off in an afternoon for the hell of it, but give this a listen past the surface and you'll find a powerful exercise in no-frills, high-impact rock & roll. ~ Mark Deming