by Monica Davies

Created on: July 18, 2009

jacSharp's bright reputation preceded them into my musical world long before their songs ever made it there. I'd spent a good year or so falling in love with the music of Cape Town-based band Plush, and became that lame-ass fan at the front row of all their Gauteng gigs. When a whole lot of new members suddenly popped up in Plush, I set about finding out where they were from - enter jacSharp.

Plush and jacSharp are now, in fact, almost the same band. jacSharp just swaps out Plush's singer, Rory Eliot, for the enchanting vocals of Juliet Harding. But it seems I was slow on the uptake of what Cape Town had been listening to for ages - the jacSharp quartet gigs several times a week to filled-out local hotspots.

So when I finally managed to catch them live last December (on tour with Plush), I was an instant fan. I already knew Ben Peters, Carl Wegelin and Emelio Gassibe - the band members, were good, but their style here was completely different to their acoustic rock style with Plush. They took jazz and funk and infused it with electro afro-pop without skipping a beat.

And Juliet Harding has a dream voice. Seriously. If I could sing, this is what I'd like to sound like. Her charismatic dancing and moving about onstage never moved her off key, and as the styles of the music changed, so she revealed more rich layers to her vocals.

I was in there - I bought their debut album, Technicolour, right at the gig and played it ad nauseum for the rest of the summer holidays.

I don't know if it was to prove something to someone, or if they're so good they just got bored of being a normal band, but you can now catch three versions of jacSharp performing all week around Cape Town: the regular band, jacSharp acoustic and jacSharp electro - an electronic, DJ-inspired set of their unique songs. Why? Because they can. (jacSharp Electro has now full morphed into Goodluck, and is currently on tour in Switzerland and Ibiza - pretty freaking amazing, if I do say so myself.)

So whatever your mood, if you like music at all, there'll be a jacSharp gig you can go and enjoy. A word of advice - don't wait as long as I did to see them - you won't be disappointed!

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