The Voodoo Jets

Review by Jo-Ann Greene They are a power pop trio. But wait: these guys rock without a guitar! Now that's pretty damn cool. Check out the soaring lead on the intro to the David Bowie-esque "Spaceman," or even better, the riff that barrels through "Big Black Machine Gun" and the lead that sears the middle-break, classic rock in a far from classic rock mode. That's not a real guitar or a guitar sample, that's a piano! For the tech heads, Micah Sheveloff achieves the seemingly impossible by feeding his Rhodes piano through a Marshall amp, a wah-wah pedal, and a Roland AX-1 Controller.

For music fans, all that may be a neat trick, but the proof of the pudding is in the actual sound, and Supersonic sounds, well, super. The Voodoo Jets may be coming at power pop from a unique angle, but in the end what's really important is they've given a new heft and warmth to a well-worn genre. The former comes not just from the trio's muscular rhythm section, but the weight of the piano and the wonderfully bottom heavy mix. The warmth, meanwhile, flows straight from Sheveloff's keyboards, as well as Dave Minehan's excellent production which wraps the band's sound in a slight blur of sonics that gives the whole set a "real music" analog feel. When Sheveloff isn't rocking it out like an escapee from a hair metal band, he's laying down elegant piano passages, as on "Cold Outside" (the violin on that piece is real), playing pretty melodies, best heard on "Faraway Star," creating sublime atmospheric backdrops like those found on the intros to "Radio" or "I'm a Virgin." Equally comfortable in a classical mode, champagne styling, moody ambient meandering, synth pop or pomp-rock, Sheveloff is virtually a one-man band, but it's the rhythm section that keeps him in check, on course, and propels every one of the songs.

he album itself is equally eclectic, ranging from glitter rockers, all-out stompers, arena-esque show-stoppers, introspective laid-back numbers, power ballads, and indie rockers to punkier poppers, encompassing virtually every facet of the pop/rock realm along the way. Strong melodies, infectious choruses, and sharp, vivid lyrics complete the picture of an album that should rocket the Voodoo Jets to stardom. There are at least half-a-dozen songs worthy of singledom on the set, not even including "Radio" and "Spaceman" already picked for airplay. Yeah, they rock, but for the Voodoo Jets, that's merely their launching pad.