Jaw Gems Shows
- Nearby Shows
- Sorry. There are no upcoming Jaw Gems shows near Ashburn, Virginia.
- August 2019
- Aug162019
- Aug232019
About Jaw Gems
Where does JAW GEMS’ music come from? The answer is not so simple. Sure, there’s the still-young tradition of too-talented musicians expanding and refracting the genres of funk and hip-hop through prisms of indie electronica, erudite jazz, and abstracted, homemade boom-bap. Among its stars – J Dilla, Dopapod, and Prefuse 73, JAW GEMS have burned consistently hotter year after year.
But that’s just the public narrative; JAW GEMS keep the real story much closer to the vest. Whether they’re lighting up a smoky speakeasy or big ol’ stage, pool party or the neighborhood pub, no band suffuses the fellow inhabitants of the room with as much love. This is straight-up, uncompetitive, fuuuuckk-the-haters love — and true blue kindness to spare.
And over the years, since their modest inception as the Local 188 (Portland, ME) house band, it’s been that love that’s tugged at so many cold, broke, overworked kids that live here in Portland, a city with a culture dominated by commerce and cuisine. It shines through the vocabulary of jazz, funk, soul, punk, R&B and hip-hop, and the band never has to say a word. After a workday speaking in the cold, calculating tongue of the man — always selling; always hustling — who wouldn’t want to be in that room with them? Who’d turn down that chance to shut up, breathe deep, and let the body tell the truth for a while?
The band’s first full length, Blades Plural, comes studded with thirteen glittering, diamond-crusted thumpers, just as all the fine denizens of Portland are letting themselves feel a little fancy again. Rolling up their shirtsleeves and letting the hemlines creep ever higher up the ankles. It’s an album that springs the next chapter of your life into motion, from the prismatic enthusiasm of “Akai Floss”; the breathless rhythmic rush pushing forth the urgencies of “Blonde Face”; the crushing highs of the boldly optimistic “Storm”; to the fat, fuck-all funk of the party-monster closer “Liquid Purchase”.
Every city needs a room where it’s tired, app-addled youth can put their smartphones and their narcissisms away for a while, bouncing along with each other to the sounds of a kinder, dreamier, better world. JAW GEMS are in that room; love, light, and all. I’ll meet you there.
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