TJ Jarosik

The Vox Pop Music Review: Palm Coast rocker TJ Jarosik gets “Back to Being” on stellar album

By Rick de Yampert • 28 Jun 2023

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On TJ Jarosik’s album “Back to Being,” the singer-guitarist puts a Vulcan mind-meld on the melodic side of grunge, Beatle-esque guitars (think “And Your Bird Can Sing”), shifty, outre chord progressions a la Yes and Rush, mystical lyrics, and sprinklings of airy keys semi-deep in the mix so that you think the fairy folk are buzzing around back there . . . and that’s just on the amazing opening track, “Hundredth Monkey.”

 

“We’re all the same, a world of sleeping prophets,” Jarosik sings, his bell-like tenor sounding at once disquieted, hopeful and joyous. “Held in slumber, days are numbered until we wake again. Ancient journey lost through worry and making up pretend history.

 

“Random acts of selfless confidence, come to focus lifting all of us. Tapping into network consciousness, sends us signals newly obvious. Now we’re feeling the love. We’re feeling the love every day.”

 

Kudos to Jarosik for referencing South African-born zoologist-anthropologist Lyall Watson and his hippie-era concept of the “hundredth monkey” effect – the idea that new thoughts or behaviors can reach a critical mass and spread virally, subconsciously or even supernaturally.

 

But don’t think that “Hundredth Monkey” or the rest of “Back to Being” is an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink mess. On the contrary, one of the album’s strengths is the way Jarosik, a Palm Coast resident and realtor by day, deftly meanders from melodic, guitar-driven power pop (“Out of the Blue,” the Badfinger-esque “Cold Heels”), to Neil Young-ish folk rock (“Sweet Dreams in Kerosene”) to a metallic dirge and more – all without anything sounding like a mere flavor of the day.

 

That dirge, “Sense of Mother,” weaves a moody acoustic guitar riff within beams of macro-metallic grind, while Jarosik goes Dali-meets-Lovecraft in the lyrics: “Let the rhinos hear you roar all the words you cannot scream.” By the time Jeremy Mix creeps in with a rave-up guitar solo, you know those Tool and Metallica guys are slobbering their envy all over this track.

 

Jarosik sheds everything but vocals and his spry but spikey acoustic guitar playing for “Fearfly”: “Fearfly in the face of what I try, unlike a butterfly. He goes everywhere I’ve never been . . . I know I don’t belong to him but when the stinger’s in my skin it’s comfortable.”

 

Then Jarosik detours into a delicious bit of meta: “It won’t be very long until I will not see him anymore. By time I’ve sung this song it will have been another metaphor.”

 

On the lyrics side, Jarosik has a knack for folding in beguiling mystical and esoteric shades without going full-tilt woo-woo (not that there would be anything wrong with that). Elsewhere his nimble pen captures the poetic beauty in the common life and love episodes that greet us everyday, as in the ballad “Wouldn’t You?”: “I’ll shadow the day with clouds of reality, I’ll guide you back down to me my dear . . . Mold the clay, inform the day. I feel alive in the warm possibility because you are the one as well as everyone. I’ll pass it on to you . . . .”

 

“For Once in a Day” is a peculiar, waltz-time, acoustic guitar and light synth ditty that’s either one of the most clever, snide and thinly disguised put-downs ever, or the best bit of self-help/life coach wisdom that Oprah never aired on an episode of her Super Soul Sunday series: “For once in a day have some vision and get out of your way. Make a decision, derision’s not good for yourself. After all, if you saw the look on your face you’d want to erase what we face when we come to your place.

 

“For once in a day please won’t you just watch what you say, creating your world is just a vibration away. And after all, we are all sympathetic strings, sympathetic beings . . . .”

 

Years after Lyall Watson’s hundredth monkey idea became a New Age-y buzz concept, much to the dismay of his fellow scientists, he sheepishly admitted his theory was metaphor rather than fact.

 

But here’s a rock-solid theory: Listening to “Back to Being” will have a hundredth monkey effect on listeners, with its mesmerizing sounds and lyrics certain to spread virally, subconsciously or even supernaturally.

 

 

To listen to clips or to purchase “Back to Being,” click here.

– Rick de Yampertat www.voxpop.guru