Jack Cade
Bear Bones
Collision Records
A Thoughtful and Visionary Look at Life, Love and the American Way.
I’m staggered to find I didn’t actually review Jack Cade’s A MURDER OF CROWS in 2016; as I seem to remember enjoying it; but it ain’t in the RMHQ Back Catalogue.
What I enjoyed then and what I’ve been enjoying again recently is Cade’s raspy, grizzled voice, imaginative story telling and use of melodies too; which is all too much of a rarity with singer-songwriters these days.
BEAR BONES opens with He Lies on His Side, which oddly enough isn’t about my nocturnal sleeping position but a ‘travelling man’ in the guise of someone like Woody Guthrie in the Great Depression; but very much a song about 2019. This is also the first of a few ‘band songs’ with Cade going all Alt. Country with a Rocking beat.
This is followed by a much more complex and almost sinister refrain for Little Bag of Tricks, which juxtaposes that ‘road worn’ voice with an intense arrangement that features some really dirty guitar solos too.
Never even close to being a ‘concept album’, the songs on BEAR BONES somehow manage to have a similar narrative and thread that links them together.
Individually the rocky She Got Something To Say and Stripped sit comfortably alongside the more passionate and earnest When You Come Running and Sunshine King; but all also capture the spirit of love, loss and all things emotional in a way a simple acoustic guitar accompaniment may not achieve.
To some degree I think this album sits comfortably in the current Alt. Country camp, especially my two favourite songs, the quietly atmospheric Dust and Cade’s ode of Love; Four Letter Word with it’s delicious fiddle playing making it as near to traditional Country Music as you are going to get without digging up George and Hank’s corpses!
While several songs here will sit comfortably in the on-line radio shows I listen too; Cade appears to have deliberately avoided trying to create anything remotely commercially enough to trouble the programmers on National Radio across the English speaking world; this is basically an album to listen to in the comfort of your home.
https://www.jackcade.com/
Released July 5th 2019
The Rocking Magpie 