Review of Jeff Scolley's "Lessons Learned" spoken word album

To me, listening to Jeff's album "Lessons Learned," is a bit like taking Jeff with you whenever you press play on the device of your choosing.
The poems, the emotion, the words all are faithful adaptations of Jeff's live performances, which isn't always easy.

When you record something that's great in person, there's always a risk that it loses something in the process. But, not here.

"Lessons Learned," opens with "Dear Broken Spirit," featuring Jeremy Hudson on guitar. Hudson also appears on "In Horizon," and "She." At times the tracks he's on sound a little similar. But, the emotional dynamic he adds to the album outweighs the similarity of his contributions.

For anyone who's been to an Open Mic Night, or a Poetry Slam at MAT, you will recognize many of these poems on the album.

Even if you've heard them many times, though, the feeling is still fresh. The best way I can think to describe how Jeff's poems make me feel is by likening it to sitting around a campfire with friends and family as the sun starts to set. That warm, tingly, "everything's going to be OK" feeling as you roast marshmallows and tell stories and laugh together.

Not all of the poems evoke this emotion, but enough of them do that I think it's safe to say when you put on this record, expect to feel something similar.

I think some of the best tracks on the record are "She," "In Horizon," and "Ollie Ollie," the live track featuring  Naveah and Darius Nickels."
If you're looking for three tracks that best represent this album, those are it.
"Ollie Ollie," again, is a poem that's recognizable for anyone who's heard Jeff perform. Adding the singers and the live crowd, however, gives it an extra bounce that elevates it from good to great.

Not everything on the album is great, although much of it is quite good.

Some of the poems tend to sound a little too similar. "She," and "Ursa Major," strike the same notes and seem to cover almost identical ideas.They just feel to be separately creative ways to say the same type of thing.

Another problem might be more in the way performance poetry is consumed more than anything Jeff does here.
The best way to take in this album is to sit down somewhere comfortable, put it on and just listen.
It doesn't seem to have the same effect if you say, put it on while you're working out, or while you're at a party. It's not that kind of album. Not that it has to be.

No, I think this album works well if you're in your car on a long road trip, or maybe while you're reading a book, although, again, this album kind of demands more attention than that.

If, say, every time you played this album Jeff Scolley appeared in front of you and started reading his poems. That's almost what this is like. That's not a bad thing at all.

I was a bit on the fence about whether every track needed musical background. One one level I think it would have helped the album in that it'd give the pieces another element to feel.
But then on another level, I like the way after hearing a music-backed track, that silence behind Jeff almost adds its own intimacy to the piece. I guess it's a matter of personal preference. Maybe some of the pieces just didn't flow as well with music behind them.

In the past I've said I felt Jeff needed to take more risks and try things new and different. I have to hand it to him here in that he did take a few risks. Adding the singers, and performing it live, could have gone horrible. If one of the singers was off key, or if Jeff misread one of pieces, even in a tiny, hardly-noticeable way, would have affected the track in a bad way.

But, he pulls it off. The singing works, the live crowd reactions work, you can hear Jeff clearly throughout the track. It's likely the one piece that will get the most attention, and justifiably so.

In conclusion, then, I liked the album and enjoyed hearing the poems again, even if I've heard most of them multiple times before.

If you have a few minutes to yourself, put this album on and find out for yourself what emotions it evokes. That's one of the coolest things about spoken word poetry, in my mind.

The only limit to what you can feel is you.