Jemma Freeman & The Cosmic Something: Miffed – album review

Jemma Freeman and The Cosmic Something – Miffed (Trapped Animal Records)

CD/DL/LP

Released 25 November 2022

Second album from cosmonaut hauntologist rock trio lead by Jemma Freeman – an amazing talent who we featured before in 2019 under the title Music is a Matter of Life and Death. Only they could call an emotionally tumultuous, volatile album like this ‘Miffed’. 

Miffed?

The title is inspired to some extent by my maternal grandmother, who when absolutely livid at some perceived gross injustice would somehow compress all this rage into the phrase ‘I’m a bit miffed to be honest with you’ which I now find hilarious.

The enormity of the under-statement feels so suburban and English, its passive aggressive and dishonest, fails to acknowledge the depth or scope of someone’s feelings.

For me it captures this middle English apathy and powerlessness that has happened with the pandemic, with lockdown, Brexit, all these catastrophic events that we are powerless and inured to.”

Now that, is a pretty comprehensive account of why you’d call an album this panoramically raging, self-analytical, defiant and all-encompassing yet scattershot, ‘Miffed’.

This album is all-over-the-place.  Emotionally. Musically. Recorded studio-live. There is leakage and feedback. Noise and melody. Pace and restraint. Madness and calm.

It’s intense and I know it’s brilliant – I still have every faith in Jemma as an artist – but this is a difficult album to love.  There are wonderful melodic, complex songs that could be gentle and whispered but then a squall of molten guitar will change the tempo.

It is more like a debut album – everything thrown in and recorded with a mania.  I know it was lockdown and Jemma is neuro-diverse,’ I’m Autistic and have ADHD’ – but I’m looking at it objectively… to a first-time listener to the band this must seem like a disorientating, manic-one-minute, tranquil-the-next experience.

I called them ‘genre-fluid’ when I wrote about Easy Peeler, a play on gender fluidity, Jemma uses ‘they’ as her pronoun… because there is psych, metal, glam, thrash, prog, folk and pop elements and influences which surface in a very seamless, natural way.

It’s a ‘punk’ album only in the same way as Suede’s Autofiction is: in its energy and desire rather than musical simplicity and uniformity.

an introspective journey through psychedelic glam-rock nightmares, woozy flows of self-discovery and beguiling lyrics delivered with subtlety and intensity, the album covers themes of secret worlds, hidden agendas, apathy & anxiety, with Jemma’s sonorous voice telling a story of unravelling completely and tying yourself back up again. Emerging like joyous sci-fi warriors, the songs either overtly or indirectly demonstrate solidarity with anyone that’s ever identified feeling off kilter with the rest of the universe and needed an equally wonky sound-track to back it.

Alongside Samuel Nicholson (bass) and Jason Ribeiro (drums), the trio emerge as your astral guides in this strange country, illuminating a path, but in reality they’re as lost as the listener. In this limbo, thoughts tumble on top of each other through twisted rhythmic guitar, bass and drum lines that interchange and play with each other in a frenzied cosmic dance described as “Led Zeppelin fronted by Madonna”.

The Led Zep comparison is off-putting perhaps but there is a kind of ‘Heavy Metal’ vibe about Miffed – but minus all the old cliches, then again Jemma’s penchant for lycra cycling shorts is only a step away from going the full spandex.

As far as comparisons go, I imagine that I can hear Muse one minute and Sparks the next.  The songs seem to flow into each other so that this is a proper album rather than a collection of singles. Jemma’s vocal tone does have something of the Madonna or Lauper about it – but her focus on Miffed seems to be more getting as much heavy psych guitar to drench the songs.

I have to be scrupulously honest here: Miffed is an album that I like, but not to the point of absolute adoration, like Freemans debut.  Maybe I haven’t given it enough listens on headphones for the songs to sink in.  It may be to do with the fact it seems rushed and under-produced – when in theory, studio-live, cranked-up guitar is a great idea. Maybe it’s just too raw lyrically, emotionally and musically for me to cope with?  I don’t know – but it happens sometimes – an album you know is good just doesn’t click.

Miffed is only Jemma Freemans second album and it’s probably their second work of genius – it’s just not an easy-peeler, it’s got so many layers and so much depth that it takes a lot of effort and commitment to get to the heart of it.

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All words Ged Babey.  Press release content in italics.

Source: louderthanwar.com