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from Therese Owen's "personal best and worst of 2006", ranking jim neversink "album of the year". The Star, December 13, 2006, edition 1:
"A toss-up between Kabelo's Exodus, which is catchy kwaito pop,
DJ Cleo's E'skhaleni Zone 3, which proves he's the top house producer in SA now
and Jim Neversink's debut country CD. But I gotta go with Jim Neversink.
It's the raw emotion, the intelligent songwriting which he has crafted beautifully.
Nothing like this album has ever been done before in this country.
It is a masterpiece that will no doubt stand the test of time."
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From Channel24's "South African release of the year":
"Chilling blue velvet blues and rye humour - this comeback kid is brilliant."
Therese Owen on jim neversink in Tonight, June 28, 2006:
"I always thought it was a myth perpetuated by lovers of Johnny Cash, that you had to be slightly loco to make real country music. But Jim Neversink proves it is not a myth."
"His self-titled debut album is the music of a true genius. His dark songs scare yet intrigue the psyche. He is clearly influenced by Americana and if one listens closely there are subtle tinges of the 80s band, the Jesus and Mary Chain."
"But his music is anything but derivative. It is authentic, and strangely catchy. After a third listen it grows on you like a wart and then you just can't get enough. It's addictive."
"Lyrically the honesty hurts. This, in turn, is offset by amusing and bizarre landscapes about Russian brides or the Western world that are enough to make your head spin."
"Jim Neversink is the most exciting CD to be released in the last three years. And the man behind the music, I can safely say, fits in with the tormented country musician."
"I first met Neversink as Michael Whitehead, guitarist for Durban band, Famous Curtain Trick. They had success during the heady days of SA rock in the late 90s, but imploded under the fickleness of fame."
"Michael, or Jim Neversink as he is now known, was considered a talented but under-used guitarist. After the break up of the band, he disappeared off the national music radar. However, that did not deter him from creating music."
"He also gave guitar lessons. His list of pupils included prisoners from Westville maximum security prison. It was a difficult and painful period in his life."
"The final straw came when a prisoners locked Jim (who is claustrophobic) in a toilet cubical "to show me what it felt like to be stuck in prison"."
"When I got home these motorbikes were making a noise outside and I kinda lost it.""
"His breakdown had him on prescription drugs for a time. Throughout this process he was writing and recording songs. He then relocated to Jozi and hooked up with another Durbanite, Matthew Fink, who had achieved some fame on the Durban underground scene as a gothic DJ."
"Fink offered to produce the CD and the result is a brilliant album which will stand the test of time."
"There is no way it will sell as well as it should in our country. Radio stations like the over-formatted Highveld Stereo or the perennially confused 5FM wouldn't know what to do with it."
"The trend in SA radio is to hire people whose understanding of music is smaller than their inflated egos. This, unfortunately, is to the detriment of SA music as a whole."
"However, fans of live music are sure to love it. Jim Neversink's live act includes drums, a bassist, Katherine, who plays violin and bass, Matthew Fink on accordion and guitar and Neversink on lapsteel guitar and guitar and vocals."
"The band is fascinating to watch while the songs take on an extra dimension. Neversink is sometimes awkward but it all adds to the authentic edginess of the show."
"When he performs he loses himself in the music. "We are different when we play live because I played almost all the instruments on the album," he concludes."
""I called myself Jim Neversink, because I shall never fall off the edge like that again," he says. But as much as he tries to hide his troubled soul, it surfaces like blue gas flames."
"If you enjoy guitar-based music on any level, get Jim Neversink."
back to summary reviewsrichard haslop, kagablog, May 13, 2006:
"24. Jim Neversink – Jim Neversink (ENT)"
"- Michael Whitehead’s solo debut made this list last year as a white label demo - now released, it’s my favourite South African rock album of 2005, too – there are no other SA albums I can think of quite like it and it competes easily, without patriotic influence and with only oblique local reference (Transfer To Harding is a superbly and universally written small town romance), with just about anything else of its quietly persuasive, slightly skewed, melodic, well written, lo-ish fi ilk that has crossed my path in the past couple of years"
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channel24.co.za's five-star review of jim neversink by Anton Marshall:
"Our rating: 
"
"You've seen this movie. It's the one where a seemingly normal East Coast guy is on his way to the West Coast and stops for gas in a small desert town... welcome to Joburg, Nevada. "
"Neversink and Matthew Fink have produced a benchmark album, seemingly out of nowhere. Fittingly so, because evidence suggests that Jim Neversink is a MAJOR talent....
"On this eponymous effort, expertly performed slide and acoustic guitars (including lap steel), harmonicas and soft drums help evoke all the imagery that others like Calexico and Wilco have made their own. This is the Country of an evolving lifestyle; of a wry outlook that simultaneously remonstrates against both tradition and new-fad-ism."
"I can't believe people take pills for tone", Neversink sings dryly on "Western World", typical of the phrase-driven heart of true country cynics. Meanwhile, the beautifully elevating "Palomino Gold Dust Saloon" catches your attention, complete with seemingly discordant instrumental bridge. "Mail-Order Russian Bride"'s chorus soars with a taunting: "What is your name? / what do you do?/ do you ever sing along with Elvis, too?". The swaying melody of "Two Star Ride" will cast you into a daydream, even if you are doing the accounts at the time.
"There are several more highlights, and if most of the song titles feel obviously country, don't be misled. This isn't the Country most South Africans came to know on "Sing Country" or "Gentle on my Mind". If that's your impression if modern Americana, may want to take a chance of bridging the gap with a Jayhawks album. Or, at a stretch, dig out your old Chris Isaak vinyl."
"And if you make it that far, you'll find that Neversink's effected vocals present a permanent twilight scene in a small truck-stop town. There's a big sky above, and a lost highway below. A lone neon sign may just be switching on at the diner by the highway... and the only people around here are the ones that pass through... Americana has seldom sounded so good. Even when executed by Americans."
"In short, a South African masterpiece."
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Michelle Constant interviews Jim in GQ, June 2007:
"Listen to Jim Neversink, and you'll want to listen again and again. His debut album, titled Jim Neversink, is one of those albums that starts as a best-kept secret, and ends up as one of your best-kept albums. Last year his band (a.k.a. Jim Neversink) supported Rodriguez in the UK."
"Where were you before this? I was in Durban with a band called Famous Curtain Trick. I started the band in 1993, and we were together for seven years. I ended up giving guitar lessons to prisoners at Durban's Westville Juvenile Prison. There was a guy there, doing 15 years for armed robbery, and he learned how to sew. He made me some beautiful denim shirts."
"Where does the name Jim Neversink come from? My second name is James, and Neversink ist he name of a very shallow river in the Catskill Mountains in the USA. The area's called Neversink, the river is shallow and kids can't drown in it. I like the positive affirmation."
"How would you describe your music? It's loserbilly music, alternative country, blended with all my other influences Đ The Ramones, The Clash, Sex Pistols, Johnny Cash, The Beatles, The Jayhawks, and of course The Flying Burrito Brothers."
"How does alt country music come out of South Africa? The country thing is universal. BB King says, Ôcountry is white man's blues', so it's really about failed relationships and all the dark stuff: poverty, armed robberies and bar fights."
"Failed relationships... have you had many? Yes."
"How important is the right look and how much thought goes into formulating your own band's look? I think it's important. We go for something that suggests where we're trying to come from, and for the rest, we use the music to do the convincing."
"What lyric means something to you? 'There's one thing in the whole wide world I surely love to see/That's when that little girl of mine dips her doughnut in my tea.' Up on Cripple Creek by The Band."
"What career path would your folks have liked you to take? Picture framer."
"When was the last time you did something that was really rock'n roll? Probably the time I put a cigarette out on a guy's arm after he knocked my lap steel guitar off the trolley at the airport. It wasn't in its case. He just looked at it on the floor and carried on walking, he didn't apologise, just carried on talking into his cellphone."
"What lyric do you wish you had written? 'Now I wanna sniff some glue' by The Ramones."
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channel24.co.za's five-star review of jim neversink by Chris Roper:
"Our rating:
"
"The oddly dissonant opening track is the embodiment of the album name - shaky, in the sense of judderingly beautiful, and good. Damn good, in a way that makes you imagine someone has taken a zombie Johnny Cash and stuck an electrode up his arse to reanimate him. No, that's wrong - it's more like someone playing Giant Sand on the wrong speed, except it's the right speed."
"But enough vain attempts to reduce Jim Neversink to inadequate metaphor. Thirteen tracks of richly layered country, Shakey is Good is brimful with fine musical moments, and superb lyrics. As with all great songwriting, you can dip into the songs and find enjoyment in the moment, or luxuriate in the longer narrative experience. Which I guess is a way of saying that a pop sensibility can be broken in to serve a higher country end."
"Anybody who can come up with a term like "Versace Dutchies" is worth a listen or two, and an awkward chorus like "another Swedish exchange program," would normally only be achievable by a Bob Dylan. There are moments of Sparklehorse brilliance, and there's a Jim White feel to the strange tales of peri-urban paranoia and quixotic questing."
"Unfortunately, my advance copy of Shakey is Good has no liner notes, so I can't tell you who plays what where, but I can tell you how. Gorgeously, with drumming that bites its way into your brain, and lap steel guitar that pins your eyelids open and stamps landscape prayers all over your eyeballs."
"I'm guessing it's the same band that brought us Jim Neversink's debut album, with its stand out track, "Western World." There's something deliciously ironic about a Joburg band playing country, and it's this kind of self-deprecating awareness, with which a band like Three Bored White Guys also flirts, that gives Jim Neversink's self-described Loserbilly its special quality."
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From Billboard magazine's Diane Coetzer's list of international top 10's:
"6. Jim Neversink, "Shakey Is Good" (self-released). Frequently unnerving, always compelling South African alt-country."
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from Isolation TV's Lloyd Gedye's list of best albums:
"1. Jim Neversink – Shakey is good"
"It may have taken a long time to get out there, but man was it worth the wait. Country rock at its best!"
the Sunday Times Magazine placed Shakey as number 2 on their 2008 Top 20 and remarked:
"No one comes close to Jim Neversink in making observations about the small details of living in South African towns sound so cinematic. Writer Rian Malan in his guise as a musician is ...close, but Neversink’s off-kilter way of looking at society’s damaged things stands alone. Klackerty Kate — a moving tribute to the Polio fundraising girl statues in supermarkets — is a case in point. That Neversink is not celebrated as the closest thing this country has to a modern-day Johnny Cash is criminal."
"Hot tip: Listen to Nails if you’ve ever moved into a house and wondered how that strange mark on the wall got there."
Sunday Times Magazine 21 December 2008
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The Mail and Guardian's Lloyd Gedye reviews Shakey is Good, Jul 15 2008:
"It has been more than two years since the last Jim Neversink album and so regulars at the band's gigs will be quite familiar with most of these songs. But the sonic leap that this band has taken from the debut album to Shakey Is Good is quite remarkable. Like a crazed bunch of hoodlums fuelled by liquor and amphetamine, the Neversinkers tear through 13 tracks of hope, desolation and despair, or what lead singer Jim Neversink likes to call loserbilly."
"Much of the credit has to go to producer Matthew Fink who also doubles as the band's guitarist and accordion player. Fink has recorded these songs with exquisite detail, giving the intimate, slower songs such as Palace and Irish Setter the space they need to breathe, while giving bigger stompers like Monkey all the layers they require to turn them into great statements."
"Band leader Jim Neversink is one of the finest songwriters in South Africa, illustrated by gems such as None of the Above, Jules Verne and Untitled 2. If punk-infused country rock is your thing, then this is the album for you."
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Mail & Guardian's reviewers list the most important South African albums of the decade. Mail & Guardian, 23 December 2009:
"13. Jim Neversink -- Shakey is Good"
"Recorded over more than a year, Shakey is Good is a country-rock masterpiece that confirmed Durban's Jim Neversink as one of South Africa's finest songwriters. From the country-punk of Untitled to the solemn melancholy of Palace, Neversink's second album laid down the challenge to most plying their trade in rock'n'roll. Expertly produced by Matthew Fink, who has since moved on to play with The Black Hotels, Shakey is Good is a must for fans of American roots music.-- Lloyd Gedye"
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From the Mail and Guardian's Lloyd Gedye's review of two new SA albums, including Skinny Girls Are Trouble, Oct 08 2010:
"'What is Americana?" That was the question posed by Ian Felice to the audience watching his band, the Felice Brothers, play at the fifth edition of the End of the Road festival. "Back home we call it 'we can't make any money because we play the way we do'," he said.
"Thinking about it, the man has a point, even though his band typifies what the tag has come to mean. Americana has become a bit of a meaningless word, a catch-all tag for music inspired by the folk, blues and country heritage of the United States. Two perfect examples of this are South African acts Jim Neversink and Die See. Both draw influences from the rich history of the US's roots music, using the Americana idiom as a platform to say something rather interesting about this country we live in. But calling their music Americana does seem like a bizarre logic, so what is it? South Africana? Both acts recently released stellar additions to the host of South African albums released in 2010, but they find themselves in very different stages in their careers."
"Neversink is a veteran of Johannesburg's music scene, having released a string of incredible country-rock albums that firmly position him as one of the country's finest songwriters. He is a critically lauded yet under-appreciated addition to South Africa's music history. It sounds rather like James Phillips's story to me. Because he relocated to Europe more than a year ago, it has been a while since South Africans have heard from Neversink, but in the past few weeks he returned for a string of live gigs aimed at launching his new album, Skinny Girls Are Trouble (One F Music)."
"The album was mostly recorded in Johannesburg before Neversink left with his band at the time -- Loandi Boersma (Roekeloos, Cortina Whiplash) and Kevin O'Grady (The He-Shes, Famous Curtain Trick). Former Television guitarist Richard Lloyd was flown in to produce the album, with South African producer Peter Pearlson manning the desk."
"The result is arguably Neversink's finest hour and easily one of the best South African albums released in 2010. From the rollicking title track to the gorgeous Honeymoon, featuring some superb backing vocals from Lani Pieters, Skinny Girls Are Trouble features some of the finest songs Neversink has written. The understated Durban City Hall tells the story of a musician looking back to his younger days in the port, dreaming of having his "name in big letters", and Cranes is a grungy little number that was a firm live favourite before Neversink left. But the album highlight has to be Stay, which is such a classic song it feels as though it has always existed. Three albums into his career, Neversink is moving from strength to strength and news that he has already started new songs for a fourth album should put a smile on his fans' faces, even if they don't regularly get to see him perform live any more."
(Read the rest of the review here.)
Lloyd Gedye lists his 10 favorite SA songs of 2010, in Mail and Guardian, 21 December 2010:
"6. Jim Neversink -- Stay"
"Johannesburg country-rocker Jim Neversink, who has relocated to live in Denmark, returned to South Africa in August to launch his third album, Skinny Girls are Trouble. The album is a lot more singer/songwriter than his previous effort, but it contains some pearlers, of which Stay is the best. A song about a relationship, the real kicker comes with the line, "It's hard to see you go, but it's much harder when you stay."
Peter Machen of The South African Art Times reviews a live performance. 6 June 2009:
"Finally, I'm the kind of ou for whom all creative production exists on the same continnum, so while I know that SA Art Times is not a music mag, I can't help but mention in passing that watching Jim Neversink perform at Society in Florida Road was one of my most blessed aesthetic experiences in the last few year, certainly blessed enough to make me evangelical. Fronted by former Durbanite Michael Whitehead, the beautiful and furious country rock of Neversink gets as close to art as you can get without being stuffed in a frame and hung on a wall or in a Damien Hirst piece. Whitehead lives in Joburg. If you get a chance, go see him and his brilliant accomplices. If you see his albums buy them. They're like prints of his work. Only cheaper."
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