Short Reviews [Jeremy - 2023 - "A Better Life"]

This is another album from the duo of Jeremy Morris (The Jeremy Band , The Lemon Clocks) and Ken Stringfellow (The Posies, REM, Big Star), with Jeremy providing the songs, vocals and guitars and Ken everything else, including production. I’ve lost track of how many albums they have recorded together, but I think it is either the fourth or fifth, while this is the 15th solo album I have reviewed by Jeremy in a very short while, as I numbered them to ensure I wrote about them in the correct sequence, and this one is from March 2023, so I am slowly catching up. I hate to think how many of his releases I have reviewed since we got in touch 30 odd years ago, but we will say more than 50 and leave it at that. The thing is, I have yet to come across a duff release from Jeremy, as each one tends to be in one musical genre, and whichever he decides to work on that day (psychedelia, power pop, acoustic guitar, piano, prog etc) is always absolutely fine and dandy. The same is very much true of this one, which is material that is mostly around the four-minute mark in a jangly power pop style that lyrically is one of his gospel releases. Jeremy likens it to the style of Beatles, Byrds, Posies, Big Star and Badfinger and that is certainly very true as it somehow has that last Sixties innocent feeling of well-crafted pop/rock songs when all seemed right with the world. This album is certainly far more uplifting and interesting than anything on the news, and if people followed some of the words contained within then surely, we would all be in a much better place. Whenever someone has a huge catalogue then it can be quite offputting as to where to start, something which had me avoid Zappa for years, but don’t do that with Jeremy Morris, just dive right in as fans of well-crafted music will find much to enjoy. Just be aware that the next album can, and often is, quite different to the last.