A musical history lesson from an expressive and worldly songwriter.
Stephen Jacques is an alt-rock musician, guitarist and chronicler of stories in song. He hails originally from New Orleans and New York but now lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. He comes from quite a musically engaged family, his grandfather being a multi-instrumentalist and his aunt a well-known French blues chanteuse. Introduced to the Beatles by a friend when he was 16, he learned the chords of some of their songs and started to listen avidly (developing a night owl adherence to rock and punk music stations), learning guitar as he went and developing a writing style for his albums still to come. Before recording and releasing his series of albums, Jacques had a varied and chequered career as an actor in Hollywood, a writer, TV host, guitarist and engineer, not necessarily in that order.
His prior albums (this is his 13th if you include his band side project Box of Moxie) have all been generally well-received by the music press, with critics pointing out his literary style, with its focus on narrative short stories. His new album, the beautifully descriptive “Pioneers and Fragrant Flowers” is no different, but this time there is a distinct theme to the project: a wide-ranging exploration of the American frontier story, with its cinematic descriptions of the scenery, the characters, the dreams and the family struggles for survival in the face of a hostile physical environment, be it the terrain or the bandits. There is also a letter of apology to the native American people for the injustices foisted upon them and a tribute in the last track to Jacques’ former producer Steve Albini, who died before this album could be made.
Normally described as an alt rocker, his songs clearly fit into the americana genre, though his voice and vocal presentation are demonstrably influenced by the heavy rock and punk bands he listened to extensively. The lyrical presentation is unusual, too, in that each song is written in the same elliptical style, namely in sentence fragments, without verbs and prepositions. The overall effect, however, is quite dramatic, and the absence of phrasal verbs does not prevent the meaning of the verses and choruses from being apparent.
The album starts with ‘Fragrant Flowers’, introduced with a nice acoustic guitar before electric guitar and steel set the scene for the initial descriptive verse: “Dakota wagon train prairies fragrant flowers / Blazing sun winds pioneer boredom insanity / Baby born side trail like 10 holy grails / Hell n back wagon train thunder cracked refrain”.
And so the American West in the 1800s is conjured up, with its challenges and beauty. Jacques sings in a stilted style, often half spoken, not unlike early Dylan, but his voice is stronger, quite engaging, but not overly expressive, in the way it draws you into his stories. And the cinematic feel created by the electric and steel guitars of Chris Siebold, with the keyboards of Vijay Tellis-Nayak, is very effective. Jason Narducy plays bass and guitar and also produces (taking over from his friend Albini), while Jennifer Hall adds really excellent backing and harmony vocals.
The stories are fascinating. ‘Native American Sweetness’ is the apology to native Americans: “Stand no one’s company defend the tragedy / Cowards fools greed took advantage no release / God saw it all housed sweet ‘merican families / Judge jury agree decimated like a shopping spree”
‘Dusty Danny‘, with its cool electric guitar riff, is about a gunslinging cardsharp. ‘Smoking Trail’ is written from a child’s perspective about the family struggles on the trail (lovely organ fills, dreamy pedal steel and backing vocals), ‘Wheel Done Broke’ is a faster rocker with an interesting bass line. The standout track is probably ‘Campfire Daydream’, where the protagonists dream of better times ahead on the Oregon Trail in 1859: “Bunked down above town, stars soothed soul n mind / Eighteen fifty nine Oregon union bound, Pikes Peak gold rush ground / cleared mind dreamt Palace, treasures n golden chalice / Daydreams, campfires, sweet breeze, grooved vibe gently” The track has some beautiful guitar work from Siebold. The closer ‘Sunset Horsey’ has an interesting correlation between a cattle drive and the admittance of Albini into the kingdom of heaven, almost like a stream of consciousness monologue: “St. Peter coming home, tell heavens on my way / Lord dusty trail, torn tattered wasted away / Load up Montana, run cattle Idaho way / St Peter heard Mr. Albini arrived pretty yesterday”.
This album is a very worthy effort, and has some nice changes of pace throughout; the instrumentation is very complementary. Jacques is an absorbing songwriter, and his lyrical imagery is dazzling. And although his voice is somewhat unremarkable, he uses it to great effect to draw the listener into his songs.
