The Jessie Rose Trip
Sound Control, Manchester
19/03/2010

If The Jessie Rose Trip’s debut single on Garden Records, ‘You Won’t Forget Me Boy’, makes an impact on the charts she better get used to the Manchester’s-answer-to-Amy-Winehouse tag. Perhaps unfair, perhaps lazy, but it’s difficult to avoid the comparison: the soulful voice and the jazzy influence instantly evoke ‘Valerie’, with some Duffy, Lily Allen and Paloma Faith sprinkled on top. Although, as the heavier, bluesy/indie rock core of the band hints, there is much more to The Jessie Rose Trip than the copycat references suggest.

Tonight’s single launch party has attracted a large crowd for a 20-something Mancunian girl yet to release a song. There is an air of anticipation as chants of “Jessie Rose” echo around the room restlessly, and it’s clear that the band have built up something of a following in their hometown. As the Trip get under way, the polished nature of their sound is surprising: Jessie Rose provides the obligatory powerful vocals and lead guitar, backed by drums, funky bass and stabbing keyboards, with the occasional trumpet thrown in for good measure.

Not only is the band’s sound polished, but so is their image: readymade for TV and magazine appearances. Rose, with her Minnie Mouse bow, flame-red hair, vintage Oxfam outfit and electric guitar, milks her audience for all they’re worth, bounding around the stage and climbing atop of speakers; the crowd responds in kind, hooting and howling at every turn.
There are chinks in their power-pop armoury, though. The bouncy keyboards become slightly repetitive as songs blend into one big homogenised mush. And at times they appear nothing more than the sum of their influences, from Nina Simone to Jimi Hendrix, by way of the Otis Redding version of ‘Stand By Me’ and the Tamla Motown records of ’60s Detroit. It’s early days, though, and judging by the reaction of the 15-year-old girls who make up a fair proportion of the crowd Jessie Rose could become huge without the need for anything so trivial as originality.

Eddie Devlin