Poignant and beautiful debut release from former I Am Kloot bassist.
Peter Alexander Jobson spent the best part of two decades as the bassist in the Mancunian group I Am Kloot. Since the band folded in 2016, Jobson has had a successful time composing and recording television and film soundtracks, sometimes with Elbow’s Guy Garvey. Having been persuaded by Garvey, Jobson pressed up some four-track EPs of his solo songs, selling them at the shows, which encouraged him to release his debut album.
This is an idiosyncratic, mesmerising and very personal record. Jobson’s dulcet, Northumbrian, bass, burr draws the listener in. Obvious influences include Scott Walker, Tom Waits and Serge Gainsbourg, but there are also tinges of country and blues, and, according to Jobson, inspiration was also taken from Northern entertainers such as Les Dawson and the North Country Noël Coward, Jake Thackray.
The slightly quirky nature of this record is emphasised by the fact that it opens with a live song, ‘Holiday – Live’, in which Jobson plays the piano, unlike Les Dawson, with all the right notes in the right order. It’s a humorous and touching song about rebooting a longstanding relationship by going on holiday to ‘get away from us’. Because ‘Holiday’ is a live track it feels like a slightly false start, with the album proper commencing with ‘Mountain’. It’s a song that you could imagine Lee Hazlewood would have recorded if he was still with us. It’s followed by the ‘Night of the Fire’ a wistful, childhood, recollection of Jobson and his friend setting the golf course alight adjacent to his village, whilst playing with matches. Jobson says that it was “a very formative accident” as from his elevated vantage point he watched the whole village and emergency services rally to put out the inferno.
The album’s centrepiece is an epic track entitled ‘Kesta’ which clocks in at over 11 minutes. It’s a spoken word recollection of one of Jobson’s friends, Kesta, who looked ‘like a young Robert De Niro’ and ‘had a bit of the Fagen in him’. These reminiscences were recorded by Jobson on a dictaphone 20 years ago and only recently set to music. The track documents Kesta’s travails which see him end up in a correctional centre one Christmas. Often spoken word tracks like this don’t bear repeated listening but this one does. Having lost touch with Kesta many years ago, Jobson initially released the song on a vinyl EP in 2021 to, as Jobson says, “cast a message in a bottle onto the water and see if my friend would receive it”. It worked and Kesta got in touch. It’s touching stuff.
‘Just ‘Cause I’m Dead’ ponders on our mortality and the slightly odd idea that we’ll still be able to influence things after we’re gone. As Jobson sings, we’re often in denial of the transient nature of our existence, ‘I was only halfway through, I’d only got started in truth, there is so much more left to do’. The final song which gives the album its title was taken from a line in a poem by Jobson’s friend Michael Conroy entitled “Official Heat”. It’s a song that poses a whole host of questions about the situation which many people find themselves in.
‘Burn the Ration Books of Love’ contains many wry and poignant reflections on life, and the choices that Jobson has made along the way. As Jobson says, “I am passing on my experiences as I would if we were both sat together and the silence became unwelcome”. It’s certainly been a worthwhile journey that’s yielded an exquisite record with some very beautiful moments.
