The Deep Dark Woods - Jubilee

A Lethargy of Liking

As long as these guys realise that a smattering of hats, anachronistic facial hair and occasionally sounding like Neil Young will not of itself bring musical recognition/permanence, there is enough in the suggestive other depths to the music on this album, their fifth [my first], to suggest a respectable longevity – if musical lethargy doesn’t completely consume their songwriting proclivities. For me, it is a slow album to start, though the irony of this comment will soon be apparent: the opening Young-esque Miles and Miles just an echo, second 18^th of December a familiar folk sound with a storytelling someone like me will have to listen to more intently to follow, and getting there with third Pictures On A Wall where Ryan Boldt’s resonant vocal begins to establish its appeal, and then fourth Red, Red Rose where its Band-esque organ and vocal harmonies start to make more sense of the influences, arriving at sweet fifth Gonna Have a Jubilee where Boldt’s vocal – at times a sonic mirror of Raul Malo – takes centre stage with a supporting cast of more light vocal harmony and by now trademark organ also at the core.

Ryan Boldt

Sixth Pacing the Room tells a lovelorn tale in Boldt’s plaintive vocal beauty, Geoff Hilhorst’s Hammond M102 swirling throughout, and seventh East St Louis introduces harmonies from the familiar production hands of Jonathan Wilson who seems currently involved in all Laurel Canyon/60s-70s musical revisiting, the Country tinges holding these a little at bay, and then eighth A Voice is Calling continues the pleasantries: all pretty enough if overall rather sedately paced. Ninth I Took To Whoring has the dark tones of Josh T Pearson but is again prevented from rising to his angry peaks by the dirge of its gait, and the album could by now – well, sooner in fact – use some stamping and stomping. Tenth It’s Been a Long Time is again harmonious enough, the organ now becoming perhaps too formulaic, but its title exemplifies the album’s problem: the lethargy in pace more soporific than soothing. Penultimate The Beater is one of the more soaring in its vocal gorgeousness, but the danger is the listener has been sedated before arriving at this genuine gentleness, and album closer The Same Things is 10 minutes long and 50 minutes late in arriving, its blues leanings by this stage too inclined to falling over in a stupor of slowness, until it picks up at roughly nine minutes in. I think that’s too late guys, he said almost snoring.....