| Artist: | Jump |
| Title: | Living In A Promised Land |
| Label: | Cyclops CYCL 062 |
| Length(s): | 48 minutes |
| Year(s) of release: | 1998 |
| Month of review: | 04/1998 |
| 1) | The Man Who Worked | 4.43 |
| 2) | Dreaming Of Angels | 3.44 |
| 3) | The Pressed Man | 4.49 |
| 4) | December's Moon | 3.24 |
| 5) | Promised Land Blues | 5.59 |
| 6) | April Day | 3.59 |
| 7) | No Time To Kill | 6.09 |
| 8) | True To You | 5.51 |
| 9) | My Magic Touch | 4.58 |
| 10) | Used To The Taste | 4.32 |
Musically not much has changed: melodic tunes some rocky, some ballads, with good vocal melodies, good playing, but all in all, more in the line of Dire Straits and later Fish than of the progressive bands. Musically I also feel a connection to that other Cyclops band Grace as they played on Poppy, but Grace is more folky. The Dire Straits connection is strengthened by the rather big organ presence. The vocals are very different though and you won't hear Jump making tracks like The Walk Of Life (but also not Private Investigation). The Pressed Man enjoys a powerful chorus and is one of the better tracks on this album. December's Moon is not so interesting, alternating between mid-tempo verses and a more up-tempo chorus. Still, it rambles on a bit and the melody is not that appealing. Promised Land Blues is with just under one six minutes of the longer tracks on this album. In the verses a sad story is told of how people act without compassion, as a composition the song is quite succesful with the verses being rather tense and although the rocky chorus doesn't quite fulfill the obligation of the verses, it is an interesting track. Then there's April Day. Again there's that alternation between the quiet verses and the heavier chorus, this is not a stand-out track. In fact, the chorus is very straightforward and there's little drive here. We come straight into the plaintively starting No Time To Kill. The melody here is better and reminds me a bit of I Still Believe of The Call. Quite a relaxed song, but with some more raunchy parts as well, one might think of Crack The Sky here. Generally quite groovy and it has a good atmosphere. True To You is a good follow-up, being quite rocky, with some breaks and variation. Of course not very complicated and the person that comes to mind right now is Fish, also not very complicated or what we might call standard progressive, but nonetheless it can be interesting. (By the way they toured with Fish in '97.) Opening with electric guitar the lyrics are sung very explicitly, overdone even. The guitar sound is quite heavy here and the riffs and solo's are good. A very moody end. Closer Used To Taste opens well with some clear guitarwork. The chorus is quite aggressive, but unfortunately as often happens on this disc, the rhythm section is not very driving. The song ends loudly and aggressively.
Bad apples among the ten offered are December's Moon and April Day. They just don't seem to be able to draw my attention. These are also maybe not coincidently two of the shorter tracks.
The sound quality is good and also on production and playing I've nothing bad to say.