I just discovered this little LP (having heard both the preceding Jessamine material and the offshoot outfit, Fontanelle's), and I got to say, I am in love with these songs. They're a cold hard diamond, wrapped in miles of black silk. They're bristling with raw, caved-in atmosphere that elevates dreariness to dangerously seductive levels. This album expresses something intuitively Jessamine, yet informed by all varieties of musical approaches.
Jessamine moaned and strummed a snow-blown, slow-motion, capsizing dirge culminating with 1996's Long Arm of Coincidence. For this, their last album, the group refined their sound to a groovy, downbeat float and shudder. This move, first encountered with the funky, insistent "It Was Already Thursday," must've alienated a good share of those FSA and Spacemen 3 heads following Jessamine's output. There is something cathartic to me, though, about an accomplished, drone inclined (with a focus on vintage organ sustains) space rock band getting all proggy, at times almost evoking the soundtrack to Deep Red ("Pilot-Free Ignition"). I knew this band had something like this in them, and this album wound up surprising me, delivering with a sound that, while it may be a precursor to offshoot Fontanelle's spacious, low key funk, still retains the menacing and amorphous gloom phaze-outs heard on Jessamine's self-titled debut.
Don't Stay Too Long, works a lot like Unwound's, Leaves Turn Inside You. Jessamine only had three albums, but both bands put together swansongs that are nearly perfect realizations of the best parts of mostly inconsistent previous albums. Call this space-funk prog, or whatever you want. I highly recommend this fuzzed-out, trippy, tight, Can-like, murky masterpiece as the one truly essential Jessamine recording.
I know there are some that would spit on me for this, but to me, this record dives in and doesn't stop. Unlike the previous albums (which, I stress, certainly do contain their fair share of space/drone virtues), Don't Stay Too Long combines their ramshackle tangent rage with driving, infectious melody and rhythm anchoring their delirium. This is an album of great textures and female vocals that occasionally, in the bluesy closer, “Hand Held” for example, achieve a sleazy soft-core noir feel. It could be longer. But a typically languorous band like Jessamine bowing out with a 45 minute, 7 song LP, makes sense. And every song on here (though you'll probably have your favorites) has something involving. If you can find this obscure gem, Don't Stay Too Long is a sound addition to any collection.
1. Elsewards
2. It Was Already Thursday
3. Pilot-Free Ignition
4. Continuous
5. Corrupted Endeavor
6. Burgundy
7. Hand Held
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