REVIEW: Jeremy Toback, Perfect Flux Thing (RCA)

- Scott A. Miller

There's a lot about Jeremy Toback that makes you want to like him. He has a poetic lyrical sense, showing time and time again a willingness to follow his heart rather than his head when it comes to putting words on paper. Parlaying a chance meeting with Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard into a stint with Gossard's side project, Brad, he carried it through with this full-length debut. And finally, he came to his brand of pop music after an epiphany of sorts. He seems like a guy who lives for his art.

That's why it pains me to say that Toback's Perfect Flux Thing comes off as less "perfect" and more "flux." Toback is searching for his own voice and trying to make his own statement. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Still, if you like Pearl Jam's No Code and the near-sneer vocals of Dave Matthews, this is an album you should definitely check out. At the very least, you'll see how an up-and-comer uses the somewhat disparate rock idioms Pearl Jam and Matthews mastered.

The CD begins with "Butterfly Elephant," a song that embodies all that some will love and some will not love about the CDs 10 songs. The lyrics begin with the heart-felt line "tune to high heaven, find spice and chaos in memory" sung sweetly over a lovingly strummed acoustic guitar line. You hope it's a song about the way memories shape lives. After repeated listens to the chorus, though, you still won't be sure. And because the music seems to lack strong hooks and melodies, you may want your repeated listens to at least reward you with a deeper understanding of what the artist is trying to say. Unfortunately even Toback admits that he can't assign meaning to most of the songs.

"Butterfly Elephant" is followed by one of the album's strongest tunes "California Phase" and it is here (and in a few other gems like "Eden Trampoline" and the title track) that Toback shows his promise as a pop song craftsman. The lyrics satisfy Toback's need to take his poetic license for a test drive, the acoustic-based tune is memorable and the chorus is almost something you'd sing along with. Experienced session man Josh Freeze, lately of Slider, whose 1997 album Sudden Fun (A&M Records) is a definite rocker, provides drums on this track, showing that Toback knows how to pick musicians.

Throughout the album, the musicianship is outstanding, though somewhat restrained. Ironically, the only place you get the idea the instrumentalists are really cutting loose is when the strings join in on "The Word Behind Words." Reminiscent of the orchestral anger in Elton John's song "Madman Across the Water," the strings stab through the mix, adding an angry edge to Toback's vocal styling.

Toback was kicking around the free-jazz scene when he realized that it was pop music he had playing on his car radio and pop music that was playing in his head. He met Gossard through a friend and when Gossard asked him to be in Brad, Toback thought he would show up, play some bass, and that would be that. But, he says, the whole process was extremely "democratic" and he even got to sing a track on Brad's debut.

In that stint, he must have found his muse, because Perfect Flux Thing has a strong Pearl Jam influence. Those who have stood by Gossard and crew has Pearl Jam has shed its grunge beginnings to become a more adventurous band -- some say mellower -- will understand what Toback is trying to accomplish.

But it will no doubt turn off those who just want the guys to plug in the fuzz box and crank out the angst. Toback doesn't do that.