PopSyndicate.com

Eric Avery, one-time bassist for Jane’s Addiction, has been around the music industry. He’s played with Alanis Morissette, Dave Navarro and Garbage. He has famously auditioned for Metallica and Smashing Pumpkins. Now, with Help Wanted, he strikes out on his own, except for all the collaboration with some of the famous folks he’s met throughout the years. Shirley Manson of Garbage acts as co-writer and vocalist on a couple of tracks, Flea pops up for a little brass help, and Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters lends some guitar assistance.

The cd has a low-key, electronic feel to it. It’s very well produced, and obviously, there’s some real skill behind the songs. Avery’s voice has a lot of the same sound as Brendan Perry’s (of Dead Can Dance), but he puts it to use in a softer, calmer way. The emotional gamut of the vocals isn’t very wide; Avery’s singing has a very grounded, even feel. The lyrics are serious, sometimes dark, and all together make a strange story.

The songs blend well together, and as such, very few stand out as remarkable. “Belly of an Insect”, the cd’s first track, is a personal favorite. “Maybe”, which was co-written with Shirley Manson, has a trippy, drifting kind of feel. Manson also lends her voice to the song, and it plays well with Avery’s. “Philo Beddoe” is the only track that I found unpleasant; there is a xylophone kind of tinkering which does not mix well with the melody. It is disjointed, almost off-beat.
Overall, the cd isn’t sad or happy; it isn’t excellent or awful. It dances around the edge of bland, but never really falls in. Avery has made an album that is firmly in the middle, pleasant to hear, soothing. It’s good background music or thinking music, something to drift off to. 

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