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Review: 'BOWER, JIM'
'Life Support'   

-  Label: 'Subspace Music'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '2nd July 2021'

Our Rating:
The debut solo album from the Leeds-based frontman of Shatner combines Northern bluntness with a modest grandeur.

Orchestral loops, synths and pianos make this more than just another guitar orientated Indie rock band record.

The songs touch upon the state of the world albeit from a humdrum workaday perspective. There’s some jerky Madness style scatting on Wrong and a bittersweet Wedding Present vibe prevails.

In the first single, Shut Up About Your Girlfriend, he expresses frustration towards a friend who has found true love without revealing why this irritates him so much.
Life Support, the title track, is his own unsentimental take on loving relationships: “you are the cure, maybe the disease, please don’t leave me”

In Ten Years To Save The World Bower reflects on his inclination to keep things quirky and light even when dealing with weightier topics. The overall message seems to be that change occurs whether you like it or not so you have to either like it or lump it. Do you decide to open or keep closed a Can Of Worms?

In When David Bowie Died he muses on how the loss of cultural icons can throw us off balance. Rushing headlong towards a new direction is discouraged in All You Need Is Time and Starting Tomorrow.

Through it all, Bower’s local support network appears to be in good shape. Popular West Yorkshire producer Will Jackson gives the tunes a crispness and clarity while former Forward Russia frontman Tom Woodhead did the cover art. All the ten tracks are going to be turned into videos in a bid to spread the word further.

This is a solid, likeable album by a singer resigned to the habits and limitations of the modern world.

Jim Bower’s website
  author: Martin Raybould

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BOWER, JIM - Life Support