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Although he released an EP in 2021 (Of the Time), it’s been five years since Luke Jackson’s last full album, Journals. Each time, I wonder how on earth he’s ever going to come up with something even better, but each time, he does. Working with his long-time backing musicians Elliott Norris on drums and, for most of the tracks, bassist Sam Mummery (Andy Sharps plays on three), Bloom positively radiates with confidence, showcasing an expanding stylistic range and both vocal and musical maturity.
It opens with the deliberate walking beat Ruler Of Nothing with its bitter regret-stoked theme of self-destructiveness in a relationship (“Well I tried to keep you full on all the empty promises I would feed to you/Till you saw beneath my charm, chanced your arm and exposed all of my misleadings/At my best I’m nothing more than an itch you can ignore and pay no mind to… At my worst I am a curse that will destroy all that you love and for no reason … It was in anger I tore down my walls/It was to spite everything that I’d known”), with the lament that “Once I was king of it all but I caused my own castle to fall/You never know how lucky you are till you’re the ruler of nothing”.
Striking a similar note, that’s followed by the soulfully sung, slow chug Woman, Sharps on bass and acoustic guitar laying the ground for a bleary-eyed morning after regrets number (“Woke up in a hotel bed /The night before runs through my head /With things I wished I hadn’t said/To people who I had just met/The night cap that I should have left”), with many among us being able to identify with the lines “I’ll pack my things and get the car/Left it parked outside the bar/If only I could find my keys/As I dig around inside my jeans/My phone, my card and my ID/A lighter and an old receipt”, before sheepishly getting home and taking shelter in the decidedly forgiving arms of his other half as the track break into a the guitar break equivalent of a pounding hangover.
The first of two tracks to feature guest vocals include the gentle fingerpicked Rubber & Magic,on whichAmy Wadge joins him. The song is a wistful rumination on just trying to make it through (“Try to keep your nose clean and don’t pay no mind to friends who just try drag you down”) that’s coloured by a shift from youthful know-it-all all to the acceptance that “my words of wisdom & my best advice won’t mean much, so let me just say/nobody knows if they’re doing it right/We just learn along the way”. As such, finding himself on the cusp, is also about being in too much of a hurry to settle into considered maturity (“Don’t rush to grow, it’s fun feeling young/Like you’re made up of rubber & magic/Mistakes are just lessons that need to be learnt and I make that a habit”)” as he advises “we get one time around/So go chase those dreams if you got em/be less impressed, try be more involved/And don’t slow down for nothing”.
The musical mood markedly shifts with the urgent chugging boogie of Curse The Day that initially comes across as an ode to running wild (“ Set my heart on fire, keep me up at night/Fighting my desire and tryna ease my troubled mind”) and not being crushed when things turn to shit (“pull over to the side of the street/Outside the house we used to own/Ah well no, your love didn’t break me”), before revealing its darker side as a stalker in disguise (“You’re gonna curse the day we met/I wish that I could put the bottle down/But why fight the feeling?/And the urge just to follow you around/And surface all my demons/ I wish that I could put a lid on you/In the way you seemed to put a lid on me/Then maybe I could learn to let you be/And maybe you could get some sleep”).
Another dramatic stylistic swing immediately comes with a number that’s been a staple of his shows for some time (I recently saw him perform while simultaneously changing a guitar string), Trouble Now, an unaccompanied, fingersnapping, foot stamping gospel work song Delta blues lamentation of the old school (“The sun came up and dried the morning dew/Like my luck, it dried up too/Seems every good thing was just passing through… This heavy load is getting hard to hold/Hearts on fire but my body’s cold /Didn’t want to believe what I’d be told/I’m in trouble now”).
Storytelling is something of a new move for Luke, and he makes a hugely impressive start with the delicate finger-picked acoustic Rainbow Valley, which recounts the true story of how a father set out to find and rescue his climber son who, a storm setting in overnight, was lost on his descent of Everest, (“What sort of father let’s his son go first, worse, let’s him die alone/I knew I had to make that climb and bring my boy back home”), their bodies ending up joined in death (“I knew I’d never make it back but as long as I got to you/A father and son now bound as one with the whole world as our view/Age will never wither us now/Together frozen in time”). The song title refers to what’s known as the mountain’s graveyard or death zone, an area populated by the corpses of those who died in the attempt to scale its heights, their colourful tents and gear giving it its somewhat macabre name.
It’s back to a Southern-styled bluesy, electric guitar shuffle for The Wire, one of those social commentary observations he does so well (“Seems like everyone’s getting used to living with their head in a noose/The heat is really rising, it’s a hothouse here it’s true…What do we do now?/Do we try put out the fire/Or hope that it burns out, just under the wire”), lacing it with angry lines like “Trust in a god up in the sky, while we’re down here on our knees/Pray for fortune, fame & glory, get caught up in our own greed/we’ll beg, borrow & steal things that we don’t need…the kids are all getting wiser, don’t miss a trick these days/Girl sell a slice of them online to the boys who can’t get laid”. I love the image of the last line “they waste away on Persian rugs taken down an alleyway”, even if I have no idea what it means.
Trouble’s a word that looms large on the album, but counterpointing the earlier number, the introspective, sparsely fingerpicked, wintery nocturnal Trouble Don’t Last takes a more optimistic perspective (“This time of year just seems to bring me down/Barely even hours in the day/The light doesn’t ever want to stay/But darkness won’t last always”), his voice hitting a higher register as he sings “You know that there will be another morning/ time when all the flowers are in bloom/You know that it won’t always be this way… So wake me up when the rain holds/And the sky is filled with blue/When light drains into every room/And darkness don’t come so soon”.
There’s two very autobiographical numbers, the first being the ironically titled Old Friends another bluesy semi-spoken chug that taps into that all too familiar uncomfortably intense experience of running into someone from your past you’d rather have avoided (“I was standing in my local just waiting on Whitley Niell/When someone said my name in a voice harsh and shrill/Well this face I did indeed recognise, yes I would be a fool to forget the regret/I dare did not ask how she was holding up/I knew she was no fan of mine but I thought she’d let me off/But she stood and stared so deeply that it burnt down to my soul”). But again, despite the wittily acerbic riposte “I said I do not care to reminisce about the days that I do not even recall myself”, the song moves in a different emotional direction towards the end with “I recently moved home/walking through these streets no one looks up from their phone and I can’t recall the last time that I didn’t feel alone and low/Round here the streets are paved with grey and it rains here every day/ there’s no smile found on a face of a person in this place”, where even an unwanted encounter is better than none at all.
Turning ruminative again, his voice high and wearied, the quietly poetic Hummingbirds Of Kingston was born from a trip with his father to the city in rural New York state and witnessing its majestic avian residents, a song about chancing on the beauty and simplicity of nature (“An ocean of pine, flood the mountain sides as far as our eyes could see/The road was straight and wide, water either side, no one there but you and me …As those hummingbirds in Kingston skated on by and danced along the hot northwestern air… Like a beauty that doesn’t quite seem fair”.
There’s one final uptempo blues track, Mummery’s bass and the percussive guitar drive of the penultimate My Busy Mind, the band taking it by the scruff and urging it along, his vocals matching the electric storm that builds, reflecting the title and dark mood mental agitation (“The cold that comes creeping in my room and/That flower bed that will never bloom…As I’m stumbling round lost in the dark…Try to sit still but I tremble and shake/So hard to build so easy to break… I need somebody who can help to slow me down/Searching for things that can’t be found till I/Drive myself into the ground”).
I noted the autobiographical threads that weave in and out of several songs, and the lines “Try to see how far I’ve come/From a poor forgotten prodigal son/To a man who’s bound to be someone” serve as a springboard into the fingerpicked, rippling closing track, Edwina Hayes joining him for the Simon & Garfunkel-tinged Beside You and its premature mid-life crisis (“Well my twenty’s past me by in the blink of an eye/Still can’t grow a beard but I’m going grey/Damn I’m 30 next year and that fills me with fear/Cos I still don’t know who I really am today/Will I ever feel content with all the years that I have spent/Searching for something I can’t seem to find/Do I chase after that next step, do I feel washed up and tired/Or try stay young forever and fall behind”. Recalling how “on my 18th birthday I drank till I couldn’t see straight, then I cried about what I was gonna do/I masked all of my worry, trying to be charming and funny to a one night stand that left me feeling cheap”.
The passing years take their toll (“Seeing my father cry, having close friends die, ain’t the kind of shit they teach in school”). Still, having recently got engaged, at its heart, it’s a love song (“These days I’m saving money, for our wedding in the summer, and I dream of one day singing our kids to sleep”), the refrain “You said I won’t ever be above you/You said you won’t ever be below/You said I will always be besides you/And really that’s all I need to know” sounding like a rehearsal of the vows. Like the album title, this has Luke Jackson blossoming spectacularly from those formative buds (though the life odyssey it sometimes charts might also have you thinking of James Joyce), and I’m left wondering how he’ll ever surpass it. But, impossible though it seems, I know he will.
Bloom (22nd November 2024) First Take Records
Bandcamp: https://lukepauljackson.bandcamp.com/album/bloom-new-album
