ALBUM REVIEWS
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ALBUM REVIEWS |
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Jackie Leven
LOVERS AT THE GUN CLUB COOKING VINYL 18.8.08 @www.vanguard-online.co.uk Wow, this is a strange one. Opening the album with both sides of the double ‘A’ side single says it all. Lovers At The Gun Club is sung, not by Jackie but by Johnny Dowd. An attempt at a slab of lowlife Americana to counterpoint the songs of poverty and misery he brings from this country, it contains the usual themes of psychically damaged men taking their anger out on their families. Fareham Confidential, the second track of the single and album, is stranger yet. A jaunty rambling country song about buying a burger at a van in the rain, surrounded by pain, deprivation, pound shops and wounded people. Jackie’s common themes are lost love, inability to love, noble longing and a need for home, for grounding, particularly the Celtic strength of mother, the female goddess. He’s been pursuing these themes for a good twenty or so albums, counting his 80s band Doll By Doll and some live fan club releases. In that time it is possible to work your way into the kind of rut where you repeat and people refer to your old work as the best. For Jackie, that seems to be a real fear, hence trying new things like adding guest tracks on albums and here, composing to styles he’s not used before. What you seem to end up with at times is Jackie Leven themes and verbal tropes nailed to a new shape, kind of stretched to fit. Some people would do this practise in private (many poets spend early years structuring to the shape of other’s work, as do many painters), while they adapt to their own voice. Or maybe it is like Peter Reading, who uses the metres of classical Roman and Greek poetry surprisingly, to address modern social breakdown. Now Jackie is doing this late into his career, a brave move to make in public but maybe a sign of frustration at his inability to break into the greater commercial success his work seems to deserve. Or maybe just a restless impatience – this is a man who puts out records under pseudonyms on other labels (Sir Vincent Lone) so he can get more recordings out there. At times I wish he’d reject more and put out perfection. This album seems curiously successful once I get past it not being what I expected. The Innocent Railway is more typical, a gentle and lengthy lope through familiar themes – one of his favourite images is washerwomen working in snow – and lovely guitar work, rolling ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ bass and the complementary harmonies of his partner, Deborah Greenwood. The Dent In The Fender And The Wheel Of Fate is a strange concoction – largely a funky blues about the longing for the habits of a father and the knowledge one gains as one ages. It works in Johnny Dowd as a character then a song from a car radio sung by David Childers before reappearing in its original shape. My Old Home is more of what we expect, a melancholic reflection of past lives, people we used to be when we were younger. Head Full Of War is almost a throwaway, a simple and short ditty, featuring David Browne guesting on vocals and composition. Perhaps Jackie wants to show his songs can be sung in other voices. I’ve Passed Away From Human Love revisits Poortown, a locale in older songs. A sad ballad, it conjures up lots of pictures of rainy landscapes, without really saying anything much. To Whom It May Concern is a reading of Kenneth Patchen’s poem. Effective as a reading, Jackie has often chosen to read from work delving into the sad heart of the melancholic Celtic male soul (though my ex used to just call him a miserable git….). Olivier Blues had a typically hilarious and lengthy accompanying tale in concert. Here it stands as a direct rip-off of a blues I last heard being sung by The Fabulous Thunderbirds but with Leven images inserted, like weeping in a country church. It’s a strange fusion. The acoustic guitar sound is lovely and close in sound, tactile in the ear. Woman In A Car is a run of the mill (for Leven) journey through pictures of yearning to leave home then, later, yearning to return home. The Leven tics are all here, the vocal mannerisms (and it is a lovely voice, expressive, warm, sad, lost) and the rich guitar tones (Jackie uses an unusual tuning that adds a different depth). In many ways Jackie is re-hashing old themes and the sound is comforting, like a familiar taste of a favourite food. That is less obvious in concert, where the mix of material shows where the songs fit in the canon. Also the sparseness of voice, guitar and percussion is pure and mesmerising. It’s past time that Jackie did a ‘best of’ but recorded live, then he would be more plainly seen as a man ploughing his own furrow through the years, becoming the best at what he does because he is the only one doing what he does. The song that featured in Dent In The Fender is tagged on the end. Written and sung by David Childers, Heart In My Soul is in Jackie’s recent tradition of adding a whole track from someone else, as a taster maybe, like a trailer at the movies. It is a maudlin and deliberately weepy country tune that you’d only appreciate at 2 o’clock, on late night radio. This record comes recommended to you but better still, go and see him perform or maybe pick up a few earlier albums too. Though rarely without one or two duff tracks, they have pearls you’ll carry with you for years. www.jackieleven.co.uk |