Tom Cox
CD OFTHEWEEK
Masquerading as the best bar band in the world, The Jayhawks, for anyone who’s actually played their last three albums more than once, are in fact trail-blazing studio scientists: the most complex of all the alternative country bands.
The fact that they were written off as too “straightforward” and “trad” seems preposterous now, particularly in light of 1997’s simmering, angst-flecked Sound of Lies album and now Smile (Columbia).
They’re the total antithesis of a superficially innovative, essentially vacuous techno band: all the inventiveness and weirdness bristles beneath the song – it’s there to keep you listening five, 10, 30 goes in, once the busted-open emotional landscape of the tune has you hooked.
Smile, without its subtle bleeps, its unexpected-but-fluent tempo changes, its bewitchingly encumbered atmospheres, is a brilliant record, delivered with the cynicism-free belief that rock’n’roll is still something vital and anthemic to the general public.
Gary Louris writes big songs under big midwestern skies and sings them in a voice rich with flavour, but it doesn’t taste of nicotine, like Johnny Cash’s, or bayou mud, like Dr John’s; it tastes of domestic disputes and that exhausted-but-relaxed feeling when there’s nothing left to lose.
For The Jayhawks, writing a song isn’t about discovering a new emotion; it’s about being as true as possible to the emotion you’re feeling at that moment. Your heart will savour Smile as much as your head admires it.