Gary Jules is here at long last! During the Sundance Film Festival in 2001, film critic Adam Mast and myself had the opportunity to be one of the first groups of people to witness a little unknown film called Donnie Darko. While the film failed to leave much of an impression on me, (sorry Darko diehards, I just saw it for a second time last Halloween, and it still was a bore. It's overrated! Deal with it!) I was blown away with director Richard Kelly's choice of soundtrack selections throughout the film. Echo & the Bunnymen's The Killing Moon, The Church's Under the Milky Way, Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart, and Tears For Fears' Mad World. One of these things was not like the other though. Mad World wasn't the original version that we all knew, it was being covered by some unknown artist that neither Adam nor I could place. During Q&A with Richard Kelly after the showing, there were the same monotonous questions there always are. How much did the film cost? How long did the shoot take? If you could be any kind of animal, which one would you be? Etc. Etc. You know, just dumb run of the mill garbage. When it came to Adam and I asking a question though, the only thing we wanted to know about his film was who the hell was singing that haunting cover of "Mad World" at the end of his film? The only thing he said was that it was just a personal friend of his named Gary, and that he was glad that he sang it, because the somber tone of it fit so well at the end.

Well, to make a long story short, that Gary is a man named Gary Jules, who apparently has been at this singing thing longer than anyone ever knew, including myself. Turns out he's been around since 1998, with his now long out of print album Greetings From the Side. In 2001, the same year that Darko was being heralded as a genius piece of work, Jules quietly released his second effort, Trading Snakeoil For Wolftickets to absolutely no fanfare whatsoever. But who would of thunk that nearly three years later, his cover of "Mad World" would come out of nowhere and shoot up the charts, and make him a hot commodity? Universal has just recently (and smartly) reissued this album for people like me who had never heard of this guy other than his brilliant Tears For Fears cover. And all I can say is that after listening to Trading Snakeoil, I am completely embarrassed that someone who possesses this much talent could slip underneath the radar and get past my obsessive compulsion for finding good new music.

Right off the first listen, Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets sounds like it came out of 1974 instead of 2004; the production is so minimal, and it also helps that Jules sounds like a mix of Cat Stevens with a dash of Graham Nash and Paul Simon, but plucking Lindsey Buckingham's guitar. To say that Jules is obsessed with Los Angeles would be quite an understatement, with the bouncy "DTLA" (downtown Los Angeles) and also calling himself the princess of Hollywood in "Princess of Hollywood Way." But these songs, along with everything else on Snakeoil do not sound pretentious at all. They actually feel poignant and from the heart, kind of like Jack Johnson's love for the beachscapes of Hawaii. The interplay of guitars throughout Snakeoil is also a marvel to behold. On the all too short "Unlucky," Jules and company pluck acoustic guitars and Mandolin to absolute perfection with beautiful harmonies. "Pills," which smacks of Fleetwood Mac's Never Going Back Again, is also another that could be filed under gorgeous guitar interplay. Jules' bleak cover of "Mad World" with its solo hushed piano is just about as perfect a way to end an almost absolutely perfect album. If Trading Snakeoil For Wolftickets would have been released in 2004 instead of 2001, I promise it would have made my top 5 of the year for sure. No doubt.