Review
Jesu
Every Day I Get Closer To The Light From Which I Came

When you go travelling for a while (be it physically or mentally), sometimes there is this ache or longing to return to more familiar surroundings where the memories of comfort and solace both act as a salve and additional salt for the wound of being away; and in the midst of such feelings perhaps more work from Justin K. Broadrick’s project Jesubrings a welcome return that echoes some of these very same sentiments with Every Day I Get Closer To The Light From Which I Came. Sure the gap between this album and the previous effort from Jesu (2011’s Ascension ) is only roughly two and a half years, but considering the sheer amount of work that bore this project’s name, Every Day I Get Closer To The Light From Which I Came feels like it caps an incredibly long wait.

While listening to Every Day I Get Closer To The Light From Which I Came, there is this definite sense that Broadrickis returning Jesu to a much earlier era of the project dropping its stake in the overall Jesu spectrum of sound somewhere between Silver and Sun Down / Sun Rise (which happens to be one of my personal favorite records from the project), and for some people, that might signal or dredge up some level of excitement. Let me not be remiss by not bringing immediate attention to “The Great Leveller” because this song is an impressive piece of this album with its lush string arrangement augmenting the beautiful and triumphant sounds that “The Great Leveller” exudes (I wish LP version of this record was spinning on my turntable right now because I get the distinct impression that this song would have a great warm sound on that format), and the best part is that the bridge between pop and whatever it is that Jesu does seemingly is crossed that Justin is finally getting there on his own terms.

Now, do not get me wrong, my intention is not to gloss over or skip mentioning anything else about Every Day I Get Closer To The Light From Which I Came (by immediately focusing on “The Great Leveller”) because that would be a damn shame and a huge short sell on such an excellent record; the other four songs on this album may not reach the expansive pinnacle that their counterpart does, but they all concisely deliver in just about every aspect what a Jesu aficionado or blind fanatic or even a cursory listener might just want from them. That being said, I would be remiss in not shedding light on how “Comforter” is such a warm and blissful traipse through the lighter personality of the project (the overall vocal performance is rather impressive, particularly the falsetto parts) that the song name might be more a description of what the song can do for a listener than anything because it just feels comforting to listen.

Every Day I Get Closer To The Light From Which I Came feels almost like a triumphant return for Jesu, but rather than getting ahead of ourselves with excessive hyperbole, let us just say that it is another excellent record for this project from Justin Broadrick and enjoy the five songs that he drops on us all; but in comparing this with other Jesu records, this is a strong entry in the Jesu canon that defies one seeming constant in that there is not a single song on this album that I ever have the slightest inclination of skipping because from the word go Every Day I Get Closer To The Light From Which I Came is an awesome album that quite simply seems both comfortingly familiar and yet excitingly new at the same time. Welcome back Jesu even though you were never really gone; it certainly is nice to come back to something so familiar after an extended absence.