Plenty honky-tonk but a touch more beast please.
The Jackson County Kills are a country band from Portland, Oregon. They are led by guitarist and songwriter Matty Charles and whilst “Honky Tonk Beast” may be their ‘debut’ album, it is the 6th LP for which Charles (in various guises) has been responsible. Since making his debut recordings in the early noughties Charles has been on a journey (home?) along winding country roads that has seen him take minor detours via some modicum of notoriety on the Brooklyn scene, solo acoustic balladeering and tasteful folk-rock with Katie Rose. He’s finally arrived back in hometown Portland, and chosen to dive head first into the pool of pure unpolluted classic country.
“Honky Tonk Beast” is fully versed in the expected, nay necessary, country tropes of a life well and truly lived. So we get cheating or being cheated; beer, whisky and barroom drunks; despairing attempts to escape or just deal with the travails of everyday hard-knock life and even the quintessential train metaphor. Some may find it easy to sneer at the directness and familiarity of all this but they are wrong. It is as categorically and unimpeachably truthful in 2024 as it ever was. This record stems from a glorious country music lineage and signals Charles and his JCK’s as scions of the best of what has gone before. For that we celebrate it.
The simple blue-collar poetry of Charles’ songs offers a surface that is easy to grasp yet the intricacies of meaning and effect can go much deeper (thanks, Stephen Kolter). The album then works as both a reminder of the glories of western honky-tonks and Bakersfield dancehalls past and also as a series of gutsy and heartfelt contemporary tales of life’s hardships and, occasional, joys. This is real good songwriting, low key and totally lacking in bombast, yet evocative, memorable and intelligent enough to bear repeated listens.
Where “Honky Tonk Beast” perhaps falls down a little is that the delivery of these songs feels to lack the urgency or resolve that they deserve. Possibly Clarke’s warm baritone can seem a little ho-hum at first, slipping by barely noticed in the vapour of the amiable tunes. Over the course of multiple listens though it emerges as a brightly coloured (but ever so slightly scratchy) blanket. One that is warm and comforting but that never lets you forget the harshness that his protagonists face. He is clearly and authentically at home in this environment, both sonically and lyrically and as a result, so are we.
The playing of the band – Charles himself on vocals & rhythm, Brian Byrnes lead guitar & keyboards, Tom Armstrong bass & baritone guitar and Kevin Major drums & percussion – is uniformly excellent. However there is a languid lope to some of the band’s presentation that feels a little too eager to please at the expense of the grit or bite that might fully drive the songs home. Persevere though and over time the band’s innate ‘swing’ becomes apparent and the songs emerge as fully formed entities in their own right. Overcoming these issues and pushing them out of our minds and hearts, leaving only room for our empathy for the characters and their stories along with the urge to dance and raise a glass as we do so.
Whilst Charles’ songwriting, and his choice of covers, Jim Croce’s ‘Operator’ and ‘Get Behind Me Satan and Push’ (a 1968 Billie Jo Spears cut) are uniformly excellent there is one genuine standout track on the record. ‘Wheels’ is the story of a hard working character who is simply trying to “keep the wheels between the lines”. The narrative is unclear, does his friend (or brother?) succumb to life’s difficulties and take their own life? Does the narrator feel responsible? Is he or someone else a veteran? The song could be a moving low-key eulogy to a lost loved one or a gritty story of redemption against the odds. This ambiguity only adds to the song’s affect though, pulling the listener in and making the sense of regret and desperation palpable. Slightly off-kilter harmonies and flourishes of incongruous Floyd Cramer like piano add to the feeling of resignation but also flickers of hope which make ‘Wheels’ one of the best traditional country ballads you’ll hear this year.
“Honky Tonk Beast” is a joy of a thing. It is a straight-up traditional country record with some flourishes that anchor it to the present. It is immediately accessible and engaging enough to surface an instant attraction but has enough depth and emotional resonance to reward repeated visits and cultivate a meaningful long-term relationship. Thankfully they do, and will continue to, make ’em like this today.
Honky Tonk Beast by the Jackson County Kills
