Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is a certainty in freedom that music offers the listener, to roam in the imagination arguably unlike any other art form. Plays and literature take you so far, they offer a perspective but from one dominant field, poetry allows you to take from it what you need but doesn’t offer up much of the hidden author and art and photography, beautiful though they may be, place before the voyeur a moment’s frozen snapshot of Time. Music seems to have the ability to cover all possible dimensions and the access in one single line to take you from for example the view seen from the Empire State Building to the very shoreline of Lake Ontario, the dancing notes and vocal harmony acting as a conduit, a musical magic carpet, to every place.
Any musician or songwriter worth their salt is capable of this, however, Pi Jacobs seems to do it in such a way that the listener doesn’t realise it’s happening, not so much a magic carpet of an experience, more like being grabbed by the hand by a more nostalgic but unrepentant adult Tinkerbell. In her latest album Hi-Rise Ranch, this musing spirit does what only bands such as the Eagles and Toto can do, she takes the listener on a trip not just in location but also across the spectrum of American Time. The sound and un-distilled memory of the lone grey wolf on the mountain are infused with the sound of angry, rampant commercialism of the last 20th Century and the serenity offered by the sight of a Native American communing with nature, all is to be seen in the mind.
Working with producer Eugene Toale once more, Pi Jacobs is evidently at ease with herself throughout the recording process. The punch, the smack across the complacent, the tenderness towards the left behind, is all delivered and set free. On tracks such as Starting Now, the overwhelming analogy of The Train and All For You, the music digs deep, it asks perhaps the most awkward of questions of the listener, especially The Train, which directly suggests that any journey could be the last one if we allow it to be and how would they react to such an undertaking.
It is perhaps though in the cover of Led Zeppelins’ Babe I’m Going to Leave You in which might be seen as the ultimate distraction or upheaval. Tackling some particular band’s back catalogue might as well have a huge sign wrapped across the label and outer sleeve, do not tamper with lest this band’s ravenous fans take umbrage, however whether you like or find the British band one of overrated and limited consequence, there is no doubting the absolute sincerity in the performance of Pi Jacobs during this song. Filled with more charm than was originally captured, Ms. Jacobs plays with the meaning so well that it takes up residence in another pocket of imagination, the original left to collect dust in a Moroccan market rather than glimmer and shine with pride in a Los Angeles museum.
Hi-Rise Ranch is an enjoyable journey, one filled with all emotions. From possible regret to absolute creative abundance, it is a farm which has cultivated great fruit and one that deserves to be thought well of.
Pi Jacobs’ Hi-Rise Ranch is released on April 14th 2015.
Ian D. Hall