Jude

How long has it been since a charismatic performer has emerged with a one-of-a-kind voice that is matched by an equally dazzling lyric-writing talent?

Jude’s Maverick Recording Company debut album, No One Is Really Beautiful, is a sonic thrill ride that spans the entire groove spectrum. Possibly the most stunning instrument on this collection of songs – and what makes No One Is Really Beautiful such a must-hear CD – is Jude’s extraordinary voice, soaring into a perfectly modulated falsetto, lifting a song to a passionate intensity.

“I feel most connected when I sing that way,” he explains. “It’s in ‘the quiet’ that I think I can find the truth.”

The son of a professional musician who toured the bars and clubs of Europe, Michael Jude Christodal was born 28 years ago near Boston. Not surprisingly, Jude was raised in a family in which music making was routine and where the kids, four in all, were sung to sleep every night.

After attending high school, where he pursued a variety of music projects, Jude gave up music altogether and attended College of Charleston, Boston University, and Emory University, eventually earning a degree in Philosophy.

Booksmart and streetwise, as absorbed by D.H. Lawrence as he was addicted to Marvel Comics, he had, by 1993, resumed writing and singing songs again. His restlessness compelled him to leave Charleston, South Carolina, where his family had relocated, and so he jumped into his Hyundai and headed alone to Los Angeles. “I always perceived that L.A. was ‘the place,’” he says today. “It had this tradition of magic.”

But initially, it was a cruel trick that Los Angeles played on him. Delivery boy, dishwasher, and demolition man, his life became a blur of menial jobs. He even tried going Postal. It was during a computer sales gig, however, that Jude got something of a break when a customer came into the store and the two started to talk music. Knocked out by the quality and originality of Jude’s song “Cammie (I Do)” and a few others, he fronted him $100 to book a studio session – where things went even better than expected. “I went in with just four completed songs and came out with fourteen,” he recalls, astounded to this day. “That was such a revelation. It was the proudest moment of my life.”

His confidence stoked, Jude soon launched himself into the Los Angeles music scene where he made an immediate impact. “Thirty or forty people, the same people, started showing up, some were taping every show,” he says. Those who caught Jude’s set were treated to that rare kind of performer, one whose magnetic stage presence and dark, chiseled good looks could mesmerize any audience. In late 1997, Jude signed to Maverick Recording Co., and in early 1998, he began work on the album that would become No One Is Really Beautiful.

The CD was alternately co-produced by George Drakoulias (The Black Crowes, Kula Shaker, Maria McKee), Mickey Petralia (Beck, Luscious Jackson), Clif Magness, Ron Aniello, and Jude himself. Everyone contributing to No One Is Really Beautiful — Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ keyboardist Benmont Tench, Grant Lee Buffalo’s Paul Kimble, and Michael Ward and Rami Jaffe from the Wallflowers — shared a common objective. “The idea was to serve the songs through the arrangements,” says Jude. So whether it’s a raw-boned track about an aging “tit turnstile” starlet (“Prophet”), a tribute tune to his mother (“You Mama You”), a sardonic, hip-hoppy tour de force (“Brad & Suzy”), or an armor-piercing put-down (“Rick James), Jude’s razor-sharp points of view are heard loud and clear.

The song from which the album’s title is borrowed, “Charlie Says,” is based upon Jude’s experience as a janitor at a Hollywood casting agency. Skewering the endless procession of “mediocre models of the hour,” “Charlie Says” gives a juicy black eye to the illusion that physical beauty equals goodness. A similar sentiment propels the jaunty “Out Of L.A.” which, with the effervescent “She Gets The Feeling” and the haunting “I Know” (appearing prominently on the multi-platinum #1 Billboard soundtrack album City of Angels) is among the most drop-dead unforgettable tunes you’re likely to hear for quite a while.

Add to the above list the Squeez-y “I’m Sorry”, the sensual “Battered and Broken,” the solo acoustic “George,” and the in-your-face apologia “The Asshole Song,” and there’s something both timeless and timely, altogether infectious and winning, about No One Is Really Beautiful.