"from Therese Owen's "personal best and worst of 2006", ranking jim neversink "album of the year". The Star, December 13, 2006, edition 1:
"A toss-up between Kabelo's Exodus, which is catchy kwaito pop,
DJ Cleo's E'skhaleni Zone 3, which proves he's the top house producer in SA now
and Jim Neversink's debut country CD. But I gotta go with Jim Neversink.
It's the raw emotion, the intelligent songwriting which he has crafted beautifully.
Nothing like this album has ever been done before in this country.
It is a masterpiece that will no doubt stand the test of time."
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Therese Owen on jim neversink in Tonight, June 28, 2006:
"I always thought it was a myth perpetuated by lovers of Johnny Cash, that you had to be slightly loco to make real country music. But Jim Neversink proves it is not a myth."
"His self-titled debut album is the music of a true genius. His dark songs scare yet intrigue the psyche. He is clearly influenced by Americana and if one listens closely there are subtle tinges of the 80s band, the Jesus and Mary Chain."
"But his music is anything but derivative. It is authentic, and strangely catchy. After a third listen it grows on you like a wart and then you just can't get enough. It's addictive."
"Lyrically the honesty hurts. This, in turn, is offset by amusing and bizarre landscapes about Russian brides or the Western world that are enough to make your head spin."
"Jim Neversink is the most exciting CD to be released in the last three years. And the man behind the music, I can safely say, fits in with the tormented country musician."
"I first met Neversink as Michael Whitehead, guitarist for Durban band, Famous Curtain Trick. They had success during the heady days of SA rock in the late 90s, but imploded under the fickleness of fame."
"Michael, or Jim Neversink as he is now known, was considered a talented but under-used guitarist. After the break up of the band, he disappeared off the national music radar. However, that did not deter him from creating music."
"He also gave guitar lessons. His list of pupils included prisoners from Westville maximum security prison. It was a difficult and painful period in his life."
"The final straw came when a prisoners locked Jim (who is claustrophobic) in a toilet cubical "to show me what it felt like to be stuck in prison"."
"When I got home these motorbikes were making a noise outside and I kinda lost it.""
"His breakdown had him on prescription drugs for a time. Throughout this process he was writing and recording songs. He then relocated to Jozi and hooked up with another Durbanite, Matthew Fink, who had achieved some fame on the Durban underground scene as a gothic DJ."
"Fink offered to produce the CD and the result is a brilliant album which will stand the test of time."
"There is no way it will sell as well as it should in our country. Radio stations like the over-formatted Highveld Stereo or the perennially confused 5FM wouldn't know what to do with it."
"The trend in SA radio is to hire people whose understanding of music is smaller than their inflated egos. This, unfortunately, is to the detriment of SA music as a whole."
"However, fans of live music are sure to love it. Jim Neversink's live act includes drums, a bassist, Katherine, who plays violin and bass, Matthew Fink on accordion and guitar and Neversink on lapsteel guitar and guitar and vocals."
"The band is fascinating to watch while the songs take on an extra dimension. Neversink is sometimes awkward but it all adds to the authentic edginess of the show."
"When he performs he loses himself in the music. "We are different when we play live because I played almost all the instruments on the album," he concludes."
""I called myself Jim Neversink, because I shall never fall off the edge like that again," he says. But as much as he tries to hide his troubled soul, it surfaces like blue gas flames."
"If you enjoy guitar-based music on any level, get Jim Neversink."
back to summary reviewsrichard haslop, kagablog, May 13, 2006:
"24. Jim Neversink – Jim Neversink (ENT)"
"- Michael Whitehead’s solo debut made this list last year as a white label demo - now released, it’s my favourite South African rock album of 2005, too – there are no other SA albums I can think of quite like it and it competes easily, without patriotic influence and with only oblique local reference (Transfer To Harding is a superbly and universally written small town romance), with just about anything else of its quietly persuasive, slightly skewed, melodic, well written, lo-ish fi ilk that has crossed my path in the past couple of years"
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channel24.co.za's five-star review of jim neversink by Anton Marshall:
"Our rating:
"
"You've seen this movie. It's the one where a seemingly normal East Coast guy is on his way to the West Coast and stops for gas in a small desert town... welcome to Joburg, Nevada. "
"Neversink and Matthew Fink have produced a benchmark album, seemingly out of nowhere. Fittingly so, because evidence suggests that Jim Neversink is a MAJOR talent....
"On this eponymous effort, expertly performed slide and acoustic guitars (including lap steel), harmonicas and soft drums help evoke all the imagery that others like Calexico and Wilco have made their own. This is the Country of an evolving lifestyle; of a wry outlook that simultaneously remonstrates against both tradition and new-fad-ism."
"I can't believe people take pills for tone", Neversink sings dryly on "Western World", typical of the phrase-driven heart of true country cynics. Meanwhile, the beautifully elevating "Palomino Gold Dust Saloon" catches your attention, complete with seemingly discordant instrumental bridge. "Mail-Order Russian Bride"'s chorus soars with a taunting: "What is your name? / what do you do?/ do you ever sing along with Elvis, too?". The swaying melody of "Two Star Ride" will cast you into a daydream, even if you are doing the accounts at the time.
"There are several more highlights, and if most of the song titles feel obviously country, don't be misled. This isn't the Country most South Africans came to know on "Sing Country" or "Gentle on my Mind". If that's your impression if modern Americana, may want to take a chance of bridging the gap with a Jayhawks album. Or, at a stretch, dig out your old Chris Isaak vinyl."
"And if you make it that far, you'll find that Neversink's effected vocals present a permanent twilight scene in a small truck-stop town. There's a big sky above, and a lost highway below. A lone neon sign may just be switching on at the diner by the highway... and the only people around here are the ones that pass through... Americana has seldom sounded so good. Even when executed by Americans."
"In short, a South African masterpiece."
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channel24.co.za's five-star review of jim neversinkby Chris Roper:
"Our rating:
"
"The oddly dissonant opening track is the embodiment of the album name - shaky, in the sense of judderingly beautiful, and good. Damn good, in a way that makes you imagine someone has taken a zombie Johnny Cash and stuck an electrode up his arse to reanimate him. No, that's wrong - it's more like someone playing Giant Sand on the wrong speed, except it's the right speed."
"But enough vain attempts to reduce Jim Neversink to inadequate metaphor. Thirteen tracks of richly layered country, Shakey is Good is brimful with fine musical moments, and superb lyrics. As with all great songwriting, you can dip into the songs and find enjoyment in the moment, or luxuriate in the longer narrative experience. Which I guess is a way of saying that a pop sensibility can be broken in to serve a higher country end."
"Anybody who can come up with a term like "Versace Dutchies" is worth a listen or two, and an awkward chorus like "another Swedish exchange program," would normally only be achievable by a Bob Dylan. There are moments of Sparklehorse brilliance, and there's a Jim White feel to the strange tales of peri-urban paranoia and quixotic questing."
"Unfortunately, my advance copy of Shakey is Good has no liner notes, so I can't tell you who plays what where, but I can tell you how. Gorgeously, with drumming that bites its way into your brain, and lap steel guitar that pins your eyelids open and stamps landscape prayers all over your eyeballs."
"I'm guessing it's the same band that brought us Jim Neversink's debut album, with its stand out track, "Western World." There's something deliciously ironic about a Joburg band playing country, and it's this kind of self-deprecating awareness, with which a band like Three Bored White Guys also flirts, that gives Jim Neversink's self-described Loserbilly its special quality."
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From Billboard magazine's Diane Coetzer's list of international top 10's:
"6. Jim Neversink, "Shakey Is Good" (self-released). Frequently unnerving, always compelling South African alt-country."
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from Isolation TV's Lloyd Gedye's list of best albums:
"1. Jim Neversink – Shakey is good"
"It may have taken a long time to get out there, but man was it worth the wait. Country rock at its best!"
the Sunday Times Magazine placed Shakey as number 2 on their 2008 Top 20 and remarked:
"No one comes close to Jim Neversink in making observations about the small details of living in South African towns sound so cinematic. Writer Rian Malan in his guise as a musician is ...close, but Neversink’s off-kilter way of looking at society’s damaged things stands alone. Klackerty Kate — a moving tribute to the Polio fundraising girl statues in supermarkets — is a case in point. That Neversink is not celebrated as the closest thing this country has to a modern-day Johnny Cash is criminal."
"Hot tip: Listen to Nails if you’ve ever moved into a house and wondered how that strange mark on the wall got there."
Sunday Times Magazine 21 December 2008
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The Mail and Guardian's Lloyd Gedye reviews Shakey is Good, Jul 15 2008:
"It has been more than two years since the last Jim Neversink album and so regulars at the band's gigs will be quite familiar with most of these songs. But the sonic leap that this band has taken from the debut album to Shakey Is Good is quite remarkable. Like a crazed bunch of hoodlums fuelled by liquor and amphetamine, the Neversinkers tear through 13 tracks of hope, desolation and despair, or what lead singer Jim Neversink likes to call loserbilly."
"Much of the credit has to go to producer Matthew Fink who also doubles as the band's guitarist and accordion player. Fink has recorded these songs with exquisite detail, giving the intimate, slower songs such as Palace and Irish Setter the space they need to breathe, while giving bigger stompers like Monkey all the layers they require to turn them into great statements."
"Band leader Jim Neversink is one of the finest songwriters in South Africa, illustrated by gems such as None of the Above, Jules Vern and Untitled 2. If punk-infused country rock is your thing, then this is the album for you."
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Recorded over more than a year, Shakey is Good is a country-rock masterpiece that confirmed Durban's Jim Neversink as one of South Africa's finest songwriters. From the country-punk of Untitled to the solemn melancholy of Palace, Neversink's second album laid down the challenge to most plying their trade in rock'n'roll. Expertly produced by Matthew Fink, who has since moved on to play with The Black Hotels, Shakey is Good is a must for fans of American roots music.-- Lloyd Gedye
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