Snowflakes

Just Jack, aka Jack Allsopp is a young British lad with a gift. On Snowflakes, his Cure-sampling debut single he nails a host of home truths that blew me when I first heard it. My admiration soars with each hearing.

“Time to decide your fate – will you be cooked or go raw?
Will you be rare and bloody with your soul exposed?
Or well done – a charcoal surface with your insides froze?
And do you feel fear as you hear another door close?
Or will you just turn away and flow where the wind blows?
And are you still satisfied with the pathways you chose?
Or would you like to go back and rewrite the old prose?”

For me it’s a stark reminder of the terror I felt on my first warrior weekend. Each moment was a naked choice between exposing myself to grasp the possibility of growth, and withdrawing into a cocoon that protected and stifled the very change I wanted. Put simply, I was stuck both ways.

“And does your life sometimes feel like one big fake orgasm?
I got reaction, instinctive spasm, in the chasm.
And do your problems metamorphose into RubiX cubes, keep twisting and turning becoming more confused? And do you sometimes feel like you've been used and abused?
You're not visibly black and blue, but on the inside bruised.”

Uhuh. More was less. I was acting a part that I hated but knew instinctively that I’d finally whittled my repertoire down to one piece. I was a fraud and a fake – like a tricked up version of Caesar Romero on Mogadon; a punchy fighter who flails at his own shadow; a drunk who searches for his lost keys under a solitary lamppost because it’s the only available light on a moonless night.

"Do you count the flakes when it snows?
And can you feel the heat or only the afterglow?
Do you count the flakes when it snows, yeah?
And do you count the leaves when they fall?
And can you feel anything at all?
Do you count the leaves when they fall, yeah?"

One editor's review: Goth-hop? Nope…Just Jack. Although the 24-year-old Camden, England, native rhymes over the Cure's "Lullaby" for his first single, it's not likely the self-proclaimed loner will be drenched in black mascara holding dead roses anytime soon. Honest, clever, and sometimes confessional lyrics, both rapped and sung well, fit perfectly over this nicely produced piece.

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