El Jezel @ The Delancey - 22 October 2006

After being thoroughly impressed by The Secret Life Of Sofia @ Mercury Lounge my 'crew' and I decided to head on over to The Delancey to catch El Jezel's midnight show (free beer). In order to help convince those I was with that this was indeed the smart move I kinda promised them that they'd get to hear El Jezel play a cover song. A cover song they'd enjoy. Now, I didn't have any advance knowledge of what their set was going to be so there was definitely a chance this would turn out to be an empty promise. Once we got to the Delancey I spoke briefly to George (guitarist and singer in El Jezel), before the show, as I wanted to check and see if they planned to play a cover song. His response - "yep, and I think you're really going to like it".

You were wrong George, I didn't like it. I LOVED it. More on that in a second.

El Jezel is a three-piece from Queens and they happen to be that rare breed of band who can treat you to a rollicking good time for three songs in a row only to entrance you with an ode to spaghetti westerns the next. Or, the other way around. Sometimes they pull off mindbending genre shifts like this mid-song. They'll go from shoegaze inspired glide to post-rock jam, and back again, leaving you going "hm, wow, what the...I like it!" Then, just when your senses are telling you "more, give more El Jezel" they pull out a cover song and end with "Michigan". Now, as much as I adore the song "Michigan", it was El Jezel's rendition of the classic Morphine song "Buena" that really got me moving. You might think I'm joking (and you probably don't care) but I almost wore a Morphine t-shirt to the show - they're one of my favorite bands of the '90s - and I was more than extremely happy to hear El Jezel have fun with a song written by Morphine. Sometimes I'm able to pinpoint the exact moment I become a lifelong fan of certain bands and El Jezel closing the show on Saturday night with the one-two combo of "Buena" and their standout original "Michigan" was just such a moment.

Visit El Jezel on MySpace.