On Spinerazor Records

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I spent this past Boxing Day watching a marathon of the early episodes of Married…With Children and they were showing the 2-part episode where Christina Applegate's character Kelly Bundy lands her own talk show after she and her friends come up with $35 to book some air time on public access TV. The show's topics ranged from bad dates to Jason Priestley's ass and the house band were called Joanie And The Slashers who were made up of 3 female metal guitarists who looked like they just escaped from an Enuff Z'Nuff video and wrote "songs" with the chorus being "slut!" and "sex!" And Kelly also sang on a song she wrote about her modeling teacher called "Die Mrs. Jones (Size 42)".

Having watched that particular episode and listened to Back From The Brink I really couldn't help myself from not trying to make connections between Hamilton, Ontario's self-professed trash vixen CJ Sleez and a fake girl band.

Well, maybe there are some differences. CJ Sleez can write songs longer than a minute in length although after the opener "Blame Me" they start to really repeat themselves and not often in the good Ramones or Donnas way. And the rhythm section showcases the strengths of songs like "Shallow Dive". Unfortunately, with the rest of the CD it seems that when anyone cites Courtney Love as an influence they always seem to forget that despite her status as a headline-grabbing rocker chick, she's always been a subpar singer at best and a half-assed emulation of her vocal technique won't change things in the foreseeable future. Especially if the end result sounds more like one of Scrooge McDuck's nephews with a head cold. That said, if Spain, Portugal and the Rolling Stones (who cast her in the starring role for the "Streets Of Love" video) can be counted among some of CJ Sleez' fanbase, according to her press release bio, this review won't exactly cause her to lose sleep. But it's still not a CD you'd want to listen to on a regular basis.

** 1/4

http://www.myspace.com/cjsleez

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