Shane’s Rock Challenge: JESUS JONES – 1990 – Doubt

Shane’s Rock Challenge: JESUS JONES – 1990 – Doubt
8/10

To call Jesus Jones a dance rock band is to somehow squeeze them into too narrow a pigeon hole – they were definitely one of the first rock bands to incorporate electronic instrumentation and dance elements, but I’m stuffed if I know how’d you dance to any of this! (Mind you – I’m hardly the biggest dance freak in this or any other town!)

Doubt’s a really cool album, too, opening with the jarring Trust Me and the more reflective Who? Where? Why? before banging headfirst into their first hit single, International Bright Young Thing.

The success of that song, followed by Real, Real, Real and the perennial favourite Right Here, Right Now, took the album to the UK number one slot, albeit for only one week in February ’91. Inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall, Right Here, Right Now continues to have a life of it’s own through licensing to political and advertising campaigns.

Elsewhere there’s the trippy psych rock of Welcome Back Victoria – which is a different take on the same sort of thing Stone Roses were doing around the same time – and the similarly catchy Are You Satisfied?, with it’s spiralling riffs and melodies.

By Shane Pinnegar

Category: Shane's Rock Challenge