Jeff Klein – Everybody Loves a Winner Posted by AlMachine on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 In Jeff Klein’s own words this album is about “Waking up at 25 years old and realizing your arms may be a few inches short to reach the brass ring and that Cinderella may be fiction.” As the record started, I instantly felt as though I was listening to a dark and twisted, child’s nursery rhyme. It certainly reminded me in part of ‘The Eels” and the bleak lyrics furthered that thought, “this old house is burning down in a blaze of gasoline and you’ve been writing suicide notes since you were thirteen….” It all sounds pretty heavy going, but it isn’t. Klein’s songs are certainly dark and brooding, and there’s an element of self-loathing but you can’t help being drawn into the record by the unflinching honesty. The album steers a tricky path, at times it sounds sinister and at other times intimate, but it remains poignant throughout, almost as if art is reflecting life. The delicate delivery on “Goodbye” is particularly noteworthy. The record projects Klein as an irresistible loner, the brooding ‘James Dean’ type, whiskey bottle in one hand, cigarette on the go in the other. Anybody that’s a fan of lo-fi luminary Ryan Adams, will be right at home with Klein’s music, so with that in mind it seems apt that he is currently touring with Adam’s protégée Jesse Malin. The title “Everyone Loves a Winner” is cryptic, and sarcastic, and if you examine the sleeve notes you see the completion of the title, “but when you lose you lose alone”. Misery sells, just ask Morrisey or Thom Yorke, and clearly releasing a record is a damn sight cheaper than therapy! Greg Thomas