‘With its major chords, rising choruses,
close harmonies and sparkling guitars, there’s more than enough sunshine here
to banish any rainy day.’
Rainy Day Music (2003)
by The Jayhawks
The Jayhawks are
usually described as an Alt-Country, Americana
or Folk Rock act. All of those labels fit
a band who might feasibly be
regarded as heirs to The Eagles - but for the sharp contrast in their career
trajectories. Apart from having their avian monickers in common*1, the two
bands are worlds apart in terms of units shifted. Of The Jayhawks eight albums since 1986, only
one has reached the Top 40 of either the US or UK charts (their 2011 reunion
record, Mockingbird Time crept to #
38 in America). The Eagles did rather better: virtually all of their albums,
including live sets and compilations, sold like proverbial hot cakes – Their Greatest Hits (1971-1976) has
jockeyed for the title of Best Selling Album Of All Time, not to mention a
score of hit singles including half a dozen # 1’s (whereas The Jayhawks have
never had a proper hit). However, in that alternative universe that I sometimes
allude to in this series of reviews, I like to think that The Jayhawks are a
serious commercial proposition.
In
the real world, the Jayhawks albums that seem to be most highly rated
critically, are Hollywood Town Hall (1992)
and Tomorrow The Green Grass(1995),
both of which featured Mark Olsen sharing co-writer and co-lead vocal duties
with Gary Louris. Olsen then left, only returning with another former member,
Karen Grotberg for the aforementioned Mockingbird
Time*2. In between, the band, now led by Louris as chief songwriter as well
as lead singer and guitarist, inclined more towards Rock with Sound Of Lies (1997) and Pop with Smile (2000). All of these records are good, but the next in the sequence may be The Jayhawks’ best. It was to be their last until the reunion some eight years later.
Louris, Perlman, McCarthy, O'Reagan |
‘Stumbling Through The Dark’ bookends the programme (opening
up and being reprised with a slower,
acoustic version at the end). Co-written by Louris with Sweet, it’s a
sprightly, bittersweet love song about a ‘little girl’ who is so much in love
that ‘it’s a crime’. It is followed by the ironically uplifting ‘Tailspin’, a vague tale about a defendant on
trial who is ‘going down, baby baby’ for all of ‘fifteen years’. The fine
ensemble harmonies and string-playing, feature Stephen McCarthy’s twinkling
steel guitar, Leadon’s banjo and the power-chording of Louris, belie the dark
lyric.
At this point, it might be as well to warn listeners not to
expect too much from the words in most Jayhawks songs: they’ve never really
been the band’s strong point. Interesting ideas are often expressed cryptically
and left hanging undeveloped. On the first track they even manage to audibly
confuse preceded with ‘proceeded’ –
an error which you’d have thought might have been corrected by the combined
intellects of producer, Johns and executive producer, Rick Rubin – but, hey, in
a world where accept and except are now epidemically muddled all
over the media, what can you expect? (Get on with it! Ed.)
Fortunately, the overall effect of the harmonies and
melodies tend to render the lyrical weaknesses incidental and unimportant. The
nebulous theme of crime continues in ‘All The Right Reasons’ with its narrator
‘dreamin’ how it’s gonna be the day that I am free’ (although later we’re told
that he’s ‘outside lookin’ in’) to join his ‘morning star’. Again though, the
hushed, yearning melody carries the song through. ‘Save It For A Rainy Day’ is
a better effort lyrically, about ‘Marina’, a woman ‘lookin’ like a train wreck
/ Wearing too much make-up’ with a ‘Pretty little hair-do [that] don’t do what
it used to’. As with so many of their songs, the musical structure is tight and
there is usually an appealing solo somewhere along the line; in this case on a
harmonica.
The nostalgic ‘Eyes Of Sarahjane’ goes downhill after
evocative opening verses:
‘Warwick hotel
I remember it
well
We lived a
dream so sweet, so sweet.
I see Philly
in the snowy gloom,
We could have laid there ‘til
afternoon,Our cut runs deep, so deep, so deep’
But the rest of it is sustained by its clanging guitar riff,
rocky solo and the Hammond
organ that trickles through it.
A pump organ underpins ‘One Man’s Problem’, which features
another crunching guitar riff and a narrator struggling to reconcile himself to
a lost love:
‘I heard she
went out to celebrate;
Three cheers
for her brilliant escape
From the
prison we were in.’
‘Don’t Let The World Get In Your Way’, the first of two fine
songs on the album written and sung by drummer Tim O’Reagan, is one of those
time-to-move-on numbers. Cloaked in shadowy string effects, it may bring to
mind The Beatles and Neil Young, who are both often cited as influences on The
Jayhawks.
There’s a feeling with some listeners that the album goes
slightly downhill from about here at half-way in, but I don’t subscribe to that
point of view. Rather, I consider Rainy
Day Music to be an impressively consistent piece of work. Some might say it
is a little samey in terms of style and tempo; others may say it all hangs
together really well: take your pick.
Louris & Rickenbacker |
The album closes with O’Reagan’s melancholy road song, ‘Tampa
To Tulsa’, which is the sort of performance that fellow Minnesotans, Low
specialise in; and bassist Marc Perlman’s elegiac ‘Will I See You In Heaven?’*3.
Paradoxically, this collection of sad songs is so tunefully
crafted and winningly performed that they raise the listener’s spirits. Full of
major chords, rising choruses, close harmonies and sparkling guitars, there’s
more than enough sunshine here to banish any rainy day. And don’t pay too much
mind to my quibbling over the lyrics -
after all, isn’t it true that a vast amount of high-quality pop songs get by
the ears with an absence of poetry and only a passing acquaintance with what
they mean. Believe me, you’ll be singing along with these songs long before you
bother your head with what they’re actually about.
N. B,
*1 – There is actually no such bird as a jayhawk, although
the compound word has several applications in America .
*2 – Olsen and Louris released the album Ready For The Flood in 2009 as a duo.
*3 – The original release of the album came with a six track
bonus disc featuring a Gary Louris solo live version of ‘Waiting For The Sun’
from Hollywood Town Hall; alternate mixes of ‘All The Right Reasons’ (led by
accordion) and a quieter, slower ‘Tampa To Tulsa’; and three songs that didn’t
quite make the cut: ‘Fools On Parade’, another jaded road song, and demo’s of
‘Say Your Prayers’ and ‘Caught With a Smile On My Face’, both of which stand up
well.
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