Jeremy Messersmith

The Silver City

(Princess Records)

Record Review by Amber Henson

I’ve recently discovered that honesty is the best policy, so I’m just gonna lay it all out on the line here: Jeremy Messersmith is the singer of my most-listened to song on iTunes.  Not something I would have expected, I don’t list him as one of my favorite musical acts.  And yet, when I hit that ordering tab, there he was: “Novocain,” the second track off of his first album, The Alcatraz Kid.  Now, I will admit to you, that this song is about numbing yourself from pain, something I was very interested in last year.  And then the song meant so much for me, I just kept listening.  And, in the meantime, I fell completely in love with Messersmith’s voice.

And now we’re three quarters of the way through this year, and Messersmith has given us The Silver City.  True to form, his voice is the most present aspect of this album.  But there is so much more that he gives us with this second album: The artwork, smart melodies, and a theme album in the best sense.  According to his website, this is a work inspired by the Twin Cities of Minnesota, an area of which I am currently not particularly fond of since it just hosted the RNC.  But I will forgive it as long as Messersmith continues to produce works like these.

Some of the same themes that were present in The Alcatraz Kid exist in The Silver City.  He’s still hung up on jobs a bit, and doesn’t seems to want to grow up, like some sort of Peter Pan troubadour.  Again, his second track is the one that speaks to me the most.  “Welcome to Suburbia” kills me with its double edged message of "life is great, but you’re living in a cage".  There’s also a driving beat, and if you’ve read pretty much of any of my reviews, you know that has me at the first pounding of the drum.

But it’s Messersmith’s voice, backed by an angelic chorus that makes me close my eyes in listener’s bliss.  He has the kind of voice that, I am convinced, could end world strife.  So for God’s sake, Jeremy, bring those vocal chords of yours out here to California and help us out!