Ato Records
2004
Jem
Finally Woken
About This Album
Finally Woken, Jem's full-length debut, fleshes out the It All Starts Here EP with six additional tracks. It features the addicting title track, the same one that blew away KCRW and Nic Harcourt and got her signed to ATO, and it really is quite brilliant. With a dizzy main loop and loping percussion that undulates slyly beneath Jem's dusky vocal detachment, it sounds like what would happen if Beth Orton started bouncing ideas off of Super Furry Animals' hard drive. The song's formula essentially repeats throughout Finally Woken -- Jem's simplistically alluring vocals stringing along subtle electronic percussion, ear-catching samples, and melodic loops built from traditional instruments. However, perhaps because this debut sort of snuck up on her, it seems stylistically scattershot. Jem and collaborator Yoad Nevo have a jones for switching things up. They elongate and reduce their elements wildly, to varying degrees of success. ("Missing You," for example, is just too weepy, while "Wish I"'s breezy '60s pop update somehow sounds too shrill.) Still, this adventurism is to be applauded. Jem could've rewritten "Finally Woken" ten times and given Dido a run for the MOR electro-pop title.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,4,5,6,7,9 and 11)

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