“Some people think L.A. is a place for the brain-dead. They say if you turned off the sprinklers, it would turn into a desert. But I think … I don’t know, it’s not what I expected. It’s a place where they’ve taken a desert and turned it into their dreams. It’s also a place of secrets: secret houses, secret lives, secret pleasures. And no one is looking to the outside for verification that what they’re doing is all right.”
– L.A. Story
Something about Jean-Eric dredged that line from my memory. It might have been the band’s name, a double-secret inside-joke that led to a fruitless search for “Generic” on the web. Or maybe it’s the way the band, full of wild ideas and boundless energy, exemplifies the movement to take a onetime desert (my hometown of New Orleans, after the hundred-year flood) and turn it into Jean-Eric’s dreams.
Jean-Eric, like New Orleans, isn’t looking to the outside world for verification, approval or much of anything else. It’s a different “LA” story. This is Louisiana, which has no City of Angels, but seemingly has the same basic elements.
Jean-Eric is not just a NOLA band though. Its appeal is universal. The band is mindlessly and bombastically fun. Onstage, you’ll find one laptop, one drummer, one sinuous dancer and two parts boy/girl harmony, attitude and unabashed sex appeal. The Boy, Frank, has a hell of a voice.
In another era, he’d be crooning rather than rapping. Somehow, he manages to do both.
The Girl, Karen, is a bundle of pure energy, jumping, shouting and pouting simultaneously.
Jean-Eric is a young band, whose members haven’t completely captured the infectious energy of their live shows in the studio. Check out the studio version of Bull In A China Shop and then the video below. One is certain to leave you craving the other.
“Real World,” on the other hand, is a perfectly crafted studio song, lilting along in immaculate harmony. Both are painfully catchy, the calling card of a band just waiting to catch on.
