Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Here We Go Again, the debut release from the impressive Jess and the Bandits, a group that many may have missed out hearing but one in which the spirit of adventure and willingness to shape the path ahead. Very much in the same vein that the likes of Alison Moyet who took under her control three decades before, and deliver songs in a controlled, female guile-expressive way but with the ability to capture the mood fully and dominate the proceedings.
While there are a couple of moments in which the album doesn’t quite stand up to the possibility imagined, notably Nitty Gritty and Drunk On Me, songs that arguably are more single inspired rather than sitting comfortably within the framework of the album, other tracks soar with that possibility thrust upon them and in Jess Clemmons’ vocals live, breathe and appeal to desire. Tracks such as Wanted Man, You Can’t Stop Me, the excellent Single Tonight and What If all have the sly wink of youth firmly strapped to their face and the respect due for a generation’s way of thinking.
There are some songs that have this aura about them that somehow make them a magnet to cover and yet are done so with only the barest shred of understanding that it attached to the history and the subtlety of the song. To attempt to take on a classic, one covered many times but none as rich as the finest considered and sand with great charm by the legendary Glenn Campbell takes sheer guts and perhaps a little audacity. For Jess and the Bandits to cover the melancholic beauty of Wichita Lineman is to have both those overriding musical emotions in the arsenal, but holding them up as a great example of having pride in the version but acknowledging fully and without remorse, that the song stands up to its surroundings and past.
In an album of original, and it has to be said intriguing well written tracks, it might seem a little of a forced measure to place a cover song into the proceedings. It can be a little harsh on the rest of the songs to lay music of a different calibre into the pack, it’s can be akin to collecting every single edition of a Terry Pratchett novel and then topping of the impressive bookshelf with a signed first draft of Great Expectations. It looks great and shows good use of the brain but it just looks odd. Not so with this particular version of Wichita Lineman, for Jess Clemmons invokes the mystery of the song with her own voice bewitching the lines and notes as if creating a blurred air of femininity out in search for salvation, the lines merging to showcase the narrowness of thought once imposed upon the female gender but one now overflowing with possibilities the further we, as a society, move away from the post Victorian hangover.
Here We Go Again indeed, an album that frames the subtle notion of moving forward in the 21st Century and yet with one eye on the past, not to ape it, but to improve upon it, to make the old ideal catch up with the dynamics of what lays ahead. A very cool, sometimes fabulously so, album of tremendous worth!
Ian D. Hall