Using throwaway tat to make serious points about our world, this is an album of great songs that make you ponder.
Karen Jonas means business right from the start of ‘Rich Man’s Valley’ which has a main melody which reminds you of ‘Teenage Wedding.’ It is an optimistic telling of the Carter family’s journey from their humble beginnings to country royalty. The twanging guitar and barroom piano and a yodel in the chorus. “The Carter family went from barefoot fruit tree salesmen to fame and fortune, truly by the grace of their guts, voices, and pens,” Jonas says. “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.”
‘Four Cadillacs’ is right out of the Elvis Presley legend. A brass section stabs through each line of the chorus and a James Burton guitar lick drops in to fiery, blues solo. ‘Gold In The Sand’ continues the Elvis theme with a Vegas elopement story that sounds like an early Presley ballad. This theme was inspired by the 2022 Elvis biopic, but her view of The King remains positive and full of optimism, because she says of “the plane landed before the fall of Elvis.” A lovely country ballad and one of her best songs yet.
‘Let’s Go To Hawaii’ is a Latin-tinged inspired by Elvis’ movies and highlights her undeniable lyrical brilliance. Keeping the kitsch, but never dropping into Schmaltz, she paints a picture that is universal. You can never really have too many ‘Plastic Pink Flamingos’, she reminds us, and you can’t get enough of the song that celebrates them.
The album was recorded live in the studio, in a 3-day session and the freshness and vitality of the music just leaps out of the speakers. Retro sounds wryly observed lyrics and with humour and pathos just where they should be. Her press hints that we should find the exuberance of Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band in this album, and it is quite right. The verve and bounce that Harris classic records have is all over this record.
“I love vintage kitsch: atomic stars, plastic pink flamingos, Elvis lamps where the pole comes straight out of his head,” she tells us and indeed shows us on the album’s cover. It reflects her concerns about consumerism. “With every new invention and fashion trend, something else lands in the trash,” she says. “It keeps me up at night. Our kids are inheriting a shopping habit and a huge pile of garbage.” The poem ‘American Kitsch’ is clearly Jonas coming to terms with crass consumerism, waste and environmental damage. Preceeded by a song called ‘Online Shopping’, “I got a bottle of wine I’m going online shopping”, and followed by the acoustic ‘Buy’ “I’m going to the graveyard to see the fax machines, bought a lot of plastic put it in the trash can” we have found the serious heart of her kitsch cravings.
The gritty guitar of ‘Black Jacket/Red Guitar’ would be a natural for radio play and is just one more delight in an album that has no flat spots. ‘The Restless’ was one of the high points of last year, and with this new album Karen Jonas has taken her songwriting to a new level of excellence.
