BEN JONES – KALEIDOSCOPE
It seems like only yesterday I was listening to Ben Jones’ latest (as it was then) offering, Echobox. Ok, it was actually August, but in the grand scheme of musical things, that’s no time at all. Not for him the dawdling favoured by The Stone Roses, Elastica or Portishead. Oh no. It’s been just seven months between Echobox and Jones’ new album Kaleidoscope. He’s been productive if nothing else.
But ‘nothing else’ doesn’t really cover it. There may be an abundance in quantity, but things don’t look too bad in the quality department either. In Kaleidoscope, Ben Jones acts as a curator of his very own museum of pop. Over the course of 11 finely produced tracks he takes us from 1950s Rock and Roll through to noughties indie.
As with any museum, certain eras are covered in more detail than others. And so you will find Mr. Jones lingering a little longer in the 60s (Beatles, The Kinks, Gerry and the Pacemakers and all) and little or no time in the 70s worlds of prog or punk. Similarly, he spends more time recalling 90s Britpop (Blur’ Check. Travis’ Check.) than 80s stadium or synth rock.
Nowhere is this breadth of style more evident than in the first track, ‘Hit and Run’. It opens with an Arctic Monkeys style guitar intro, is followed by a Madness-esque interlude and adds in some 50s doo-wop backing harmonies for good measure. Not bad for two minutes 36 of pop.
The album as a whole is a tour de force of musical styles while remaining undoubtedly Ben Jones through and through. Even the funk-soul razzle dazzle of ‘Blinded by the Sun’ (no, not that Seahorses song) remains distinctly and definitively a Ben Jones song despite being unlike anything else on the album – or in his back-catalogue.
Similar things could be said of the continental sounding ‘The River of Saturday Night’ (complete with accordion) or the honky-tonk piano of ‘Look Up’: think Blur’s ‘He Thought of Cars’ in the right hand and Modest Mouse’s ‘Spitting Venom’ in the left. It’s an eclecticism as wide as you’d find on The White Album. The thing is there were four Beatles; and there’s only one Ben Jones. Sorry, did that sound like hyperbole’ Ok, maybe a bit.
Whereas the sound of Ben Jones’ band The Lovedays often has a grittier, snarlier sound to it, Jones’ choice of a softer sound allows for a much broader sweep of styles and nuances. That is not to say the content of the songs found on Kaleidoscope lack grit. Far, far from it.
This latest is an album of world-weariness and disappointment. Ben Jones, or the person that Ben Jones is pretending to be is not a happy chap. The title track features lines like ‘This if for’the ones that time simply forgot’, while ‘Blinded By the Sun’ for all its sunny sounding gospel/soul funkiness features the bitter observation that ‘life isn’t kind, though it may feel like sometimes.’
On and on the sense of ennui goes throughout the album: ‘I’m pretty sure you can still find me/standing out here pissing into the wind’ (from ‘No Reply’); ‘I’m still lost without a trace’ (from ‘Rain Down on Me’) or ‘Leave me in peace now, instead of in pieces’ (from ‘Under the Stone’). And that’s just for starters.
But despite all of this disaffection and misery, there are enough chinks of light in this album to suggest that maybe it’s not the end of the world after all. The music itself remains fairly upbeat. And every now and then you even get a lyric with a positive spin (‘Life is so much more than an uphill run’ from ‘Look Up’, or ‘come sing with me/be in my symphony/and we can go to heaven in my car’ from the Paul McCartney meets Divine Comedy song, ‘Dandelion Clock’).
This album is a multi-textured masterclass in songwriting. It covers a vast array of styles, themes and feelings. Not bad for a one man band.
3/03/2011 • Album Review
By Stephen Morris • Photos by
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
