Last Monday night was already the second evening of the Janks August residency at the Satellite, and the club seemed to be quite packed, these residencies have been quite a success lately! Once again, I hadn’t heard about the band before entering the club, and got very impressed by their strong sense of melodies packed into close-to-classic rock instrumental jams. The Janks had great style, an indie flare almost hidden behind lots of classic influences and, above everything, they were total killers live.
They have been described as Jack White and Jimmy Page’s progeny, and they actually covered Led Zeppelin’s ‘Nobody’s Fault but Mine’, whereas some of their songs, like ‘All Mine’ or ‘Demon Dance’, had the bluesy let’s-tear-the-place-down of the greatest, others, like the instant classic ‘Dead Man’, had an indie-music-meets-folk melodic sensibility, and the last song they played, ‘You’re Gonna Die’ was a spaghetti western, duel under the sun, Tarantino-soundtrack-ready. I also thought that ‘Every Man For Himself’ has robbed half a line to Elliott Smith’s ‘Waltz #2’ (but may be it’s just me),… so how could I really describe their set? Let’s just say that the sense of drama in their music kept me interested till the end.
From song to song, it was vocal harmony galore between brothers Zachary and Dylan Zmed, who have surrounded themselves with interesting musicians: Leon LeDoux was energetically beating his drum set while looking super happy to be there, having a permanent ear-to-ear smile, while bassist Paul Inder (yes, Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister’s son!!) was providing the other part of the the rhythm section. Each song was releasing its set of surprises and unexpected bridges, and curiously, ‘Rat Racers, despite its classic-rock backbone, was infused with slight reggae influences.
I keep reading a million different music references to describe their music, described by Zach himself as a sound ‘based around our love for the close harmony tradition of The Everly Brothers, the wide range of musical style from bands like Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Queen, Prince… to name a few’… they could effectively name many others.
Are they going to be the next big thing around? Looking at the crowd around me, they have already managed to gather a strong following, so it could well be the case if they keep coming back with this interesting mix of music which is never losing its real sense of melody, and if they keep playing such dynamic live shows with heartbreaking distorted guitar solos, forcing them to kneel down on stage, and releasing some fury escaped from herds of rock guitar heroes.
They have released a complete album ‘Hands of Time’ back in 2009, but they have a new EP, entitled ‘Meet the Janks’ and everybody should effectively meet them.
Setlist
Old Enough
Millionaire
Everyman for himself
All Mine
Living in Denial
Rat Racers
Dead Man
Nobody’s fault but mine
Demon Dance
You’re gonna die
