Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
We live in a period of time in which we can say with grim fascination, that we reap the benefits of all our follies, that we get what we deserve; from politics, to the rage that is bent out of shape, an inward looking nation and public instead of one that is progressive and willing to change the world through kindness, compassion and hope. We have stumbled blindly, taken even greater steps to ensure that our minds are uncluttered by reasonable thought and debate, that our mouths flap in readiness to answer our own prejudices against everybody else’s opinion.
We seem to have forgotten the strength of character in which our Jawbone is sturdy, in which we listen to learn, one on which we can hang our greatest desires upon and still find room in which to praise others for their sense of occasion, their craft and the pursuit of understanding what makes their heart tick in time with their hopefully pure hearts.
It is in Jawbone’s eponymous debut album in which the lover of art, the protector perhaps of the last feelings of security available, can take refuge and maintain a sense of orderly calm, one which doesn’t just raise the banner of a simple genre, but one in which is happy to cross the floor and take inspiration from a number of different sources, an archway of expression which has its own distinctive flavour running through it.
One might wish in this day and age to only salute a flag they recognise, the dangers in that are inherent, they lead to a route of conformity, in which your opinions are not based on experience, instead they are corrupted by the seeds of mass following. Instead of saluting a flag or reason, instead we perhaps should be looking to accept another view point, the soft serenade can sit just as well in the company of the raucous as it can in the bones of the Family Man.
In songs such as the opener, Leave No Traces, When Your Gun Is Loaded, Rolling On The Underground, Sit Round The Table, Two Billion Heartbeats and the album’s inspired closer of The Years Used To Mean So Much, Jawbone express their will with the assurance of creative wisdom that is always so welcome when a group bring beauty and expressive harmony to bare on their debut recording.
An album that lives cheek by jowl with sincerity, a series of songs that talk with cohesion and which never wastes breathe on an empty promise, Jawbone is an outline of what is to surely come, a deep-seated sense of having the chops to deliver an album of increasing cool.Â
Jawbone release their eponymous debut album on Friday 9th November.
Ian D. Hall