The album lacks the ascendancy to reach its full potential.
It’s not hard to feel depressed about the world with just one look at the internet, and while albums about political injustice have enjoyed a resurgence, jade imagine’s debut takes a much-needed look at what it’s like to be yanked between everyday horror and the feel-good.
But this yank is more like a slow drag on Basic Love, and the music itself often fails to conjure how it feels to be in this generation’s headspace. While songs like ‘The News’ may have catchy hooks, the album lacks a sense of struggle and power to deliver consistent hard-hitters.
‘Gonna Do Nothing’ starts it off strong with a tense, punk-inspired march, but the tension quickly slips away, and each track reveals itself to be the same as the next: distant, aimless, and a little bit flat. Even synth jams and new wave interludes end up sounding like forced experimentation rather than natural evolutions, as most songs stretch past the four-minute mark and stall the album from galloping towards its best bits.
With more refined songwriting and a concrete vision, Basic Love could’ve been a powerful, moving album about how the world affects us today; instead, it makes me wonder where jade imagine could be going next.
5
