Honest and evocative songwriting with some beautiful harmonies from Peyton’s wife, Abigail.
Jonathan Peyton certainly sings from the heart, his songs are emotive and evocative. The emotional substance of his songs is heightened by the wonderful backing vocals of his wife Abigail. The album opens with ‘To The Country’, an endearing, acoustically driven duet with Mrs Peyton, ruminating on the healing powers of getting away from it all.
At one point in his life Peyton was involved in a religious cult and the album has its fair share of songs about American style faith. ‘No Amazing Grace‘ recounts Peyton’s days in a Christian sect, ‘Fierce desire, razor blades, Cut em down when they’re in your way, Singing choirs, lights on your face, Sweet hymnals fill the place, Speaker of truth come close to me, Let me touch your hand, would you set me free’. Abigail Peyton’s vocals in the chorus go a little way to softening the stark nature of the lyrics. ‘Sally’ is an acoustic guitar-based song about a girl growing up ‘in the belt of the bible’. Her mother’s abused by her evangelical, preacher husband, whom she finally leaves consigning Sally to be a ‘fatherless child’. That is until he comes into her life 10 years later, via the small screen, as a raging televangelist.
In ‘Goin’ Crazy’, which is possibly the most rock’n’roll number and features some great guitar playing, it’s clear that Peyton has done of a lot of questioning of his beliefs over the past few years, which he says has been “valuable yet painful”. However, when he sings, ‘You know I went to heaven, knocked on the big man’s door, He just peeked through the cracks. He said “you ain’t welcome here no more”’, his tongue is quite possibly firmly in his cheek. ‘Denial’ also calls into question the convictions of a woman begging for resurrection as her husband fades away, ‘What you call faith sure looks like denial’.
It’s not all religious references though, there’s plenty of rumination on relationships and death. ‘Those Days Were Hell’ is one of these; however, Peyton can’t quite resist as he and Abigail sing the catchy chorus, ‘You promised heaven like you believed it, Oh but those days were hell’. There’s the child who’s died in ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ leading to the rest of the family ‘Wearing raincoats on a sunny day’. It’s poignant stuff.
Sadler Vaden, of Jason Isbell’s band, The 400 Unit, produced the record, and plays guitar on all 12 songs, as well as contributing keyboards to several numbers. The calibre and quality of Peyton’s songwriting is such that many of these tracks would not be out of place on one of Isbell’s albums, which is high praise indeed. Given the role luck plays in fame and fortune, whether Peyton will become as well-known as Isbell is anyone’s guess, but if there’s any justice in the world, on the back of this album, his star should certainly keep ascending.
