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Arcadia, Jesse Terry‘s latest album, is his most musically diverse to date. It sees him unleashing his rock n roll side, sharing space with his more familiar singer-songwriter self. It’s felt from the opening with the title track, all thumping drums, swaggering guitar and Springsteenesque drive in its get away from the urban jungle sentiments (“there’s too many voices/Sky full of pictures/There’s a taxicab river/Raging by my open door… Oh, the city won’t let go/I’ve been hers since the cradle/Yeah it feels like betrayal/To burn through the barricades”).
And from burning barricades to the slower blaze of the strummed, guitar-jangling Burn The Boats, another number about making the transition into a more rural life (“Are the redwood trees, ever in your dreams?/Are the branches twistin’ higher in your mind?/You hear an angel choir, under cathedral spires?/Do you remember how the world lit up when we crossed that borderline?”), urging that, “if you’re longin’ for the smoke” and to release the fire within then “light a match & burn the boats”.
It gets funkier with the slow and bluesy Gunpowder Days, which, continuing the theme, is about moving on from his younger, more volatile days (“I’m a redeemed soul/Seems I’m headed for a better place & time/No more hungry wolves, dressed as howling thieves/It matters who I hurt, matters who I leave…I’m cutting the fuse, to those gunpowder days”).
Tapping into his inner Neil Young, the organ and wailing guitar of the lurching Poison Arrow again metaphorically talks of “The thunder of a distant drum/Archers on their ponies come/To find me in the thorns” and poison arrows “dipped in secrets, tipped with lies” and imagery of grasping redemption (“who will be the one to blame/If I miss my chance to fly away”).
The title of the turned down, keening ballad Someone In Repair pretty much tells you the theme of the metaphor-heavy, recovery-themed song (“Someone’s buying up the high-rise/Hasn’t seen their child in years/Someone’s shining in the spotlight/But in the wings they shake with fear/Someone’s wrestling with a bottle/And we all know the fight ain’t fair”) and its call “be gentle to a stranger/For they are someone in repair” because “We need a little mercy to find us all…We’re all someone in repair”,
It’s back to ringing guitars and the Tom Petty-like Native Child and another road to redemption in search of lost innocence (“I’ve been lost most of my life/It was grace that brought me here”) through the love of others (“Honey won’t you take me running/I wanna see what you see/I never really knew myself/Until you believed in me/You don’t wear my wicked armor/But you wear my smile/I’ll follow where you lead, native child”).
It reaches the mid-way mark with another organ-based punchy cut, Waiting Out The Hurricane, a narrative about sitting out a literal and metaphorical storm (“Back in ’85 we were ready for a firefight/Shotgun by the bedpost, gleaming in the moonlight/There were shadows dancing in the corner of our eyes/You & me prayin’ somebody don’t have to die…We heard he did some time for a hold-up down in Rockaway/We were trapped in the hell between a man and his judgement day/We had a sliver of a view, huddled close underneath your bed/Our innocence ended in a symphony of blue & red”) and the trauma that never quite leaves (“Sometimes in the night, I still wake up in a cold sweat/With a calm in my head that hasn’t hit my heart yet/Do you have a long lost memory like a room that you’ve painted black?/And when you stumble on it, does it ever take you back?”).
A jittery piano ballad with early Radiohead hints, Where You Came From, is a highly personal song about how it was feared Jesse’s newborn son had a serious genetic condition that threatened his health and resulted in a year’s worth of doctor’s appointments and medical tests (“White coats, haven’t seen the likes of you…nobody of flesh & blood/Knows where you came from”). He was diagnosed with some severe allergies, along with an autoimmune condition that is serious but, thankfully, not life-threatening. Talking about the experience, Jesse explains: “What I did realize is that medicine does not have all the answers, nor do they claim to. So much of life is a mystery. Our map of genes is like a solar system beneath our skin, that has only been partially charted. While I was still in shock over the news, I wrote “Where You Came From” for my boy, in an effort to make some sense of it all.”
More jangle, part McGuinn, part Petty, River Town is an ode to hometown roots (“I drove south, the second I was old enough/Folks told me Tennessee & some southern accents would fix me right up/One night I broke down, realized it was all pretend/Yeah there’s only so long roots can survive without digging back in”). He’s back on piano, then, for the slow Springsteen-like ballad Fear of Flying, another ruminative reflection on the past (“We wore silver keys around our necks/When the days were short we could see our breath/And we wished those spokes would become wings/But we never left the ground/And just like me, you got lost in the shuffle/Always much too loud, always too much trouble/When you went to sleep, all their words would ring/And fill your soul with doubt”) and moving on (“We can lie to the world but not each other/Honey for so long we’ve run for cover/Cashed in our chips, folded our cards/With aces in our hand/So if we don’t break out tonight/We’ll have ourselves to blame/Honey lift the veil, there’s freedom hiding/If we can lose our fear of flying”).
Another ballad, this time with piano and fingerpicked guitar, Strong is a resolution to be the rock when others are losing faith (“I feel it in my voice, though I can’t make the words/It echoes through my heart & in the morning birds… believe in me/You can trust my smile/When you need a spark/Believe in me…I swear with all my might, it’s gonna be alright”).
Marking a tonal departure and again with shades of Neil Young, Headlines is the album’s angry song, a guitar growly number about the media fomenting divisiveness (“Headlines stoke the fear inside/Designed to confuse/Headlines polarizing/Make you choose a side/Headlines worded carefully/Guaranteed to divide… Headlines pulling left & right/When we need some common ground”).
It ends on a note of hope with the simple piano ballad Message From A Hummingbird, the winged messenger outside the motel window carrying news that “hard times are over, the spirits are calm/The wolves have moved on from the reeds“. Those who only know him from his troubadour folk albums (though even those had hints of what is more manifest here) may be given slight pause to fully take in those big chords, blues organ sweeps and ringing guitars but, to borrow a line from the title track, it’ll be “worth the sweat and blood/Just to hear the gods rejoice”.
Arcadia (4th October 2024) Wander Recordings
Pre-Order: https://jesseterry.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Jesse is touring the UK now; dates and ticket links can be found here: https://www.jesseterrymusic.com/tour
