Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2010 > May > 20 > Entry
CD review: The Jayhawks ‘The Jayhawks (aka The Bunkhouse Album)’
The Jayhawks
‘The Jayhawks (aka The Bunkhouse Album)’
(Lost Highway)
Grade: B
A reissue many Austinites would have dearly loved to see about 15 years ago, the first Jayhawks LP was released in 1986 and bafflingly is only hitting CD for the first time now — long after the quasi-genre the band helped launch has largely wafted off in a pedal-steel vapor.
Fans hoping for a lost prequel to the “Hollywood Town Hall” sound may be disappointed: The boys aren’t making much of the piano and organ yet, and these upbeat compositions lack the spellbinding melancholy of that 1992 record. But even while their sound owes too much to Gram Parsons and their lyrics rely heavily on jailhouse-and-barstool country clichés (“Misery Tavern / It’s the only place I know,” goes a typical line), there’s much to enjoy here.
Singers Mark Olson and Gary Louris have already found the sweet spot, harmony-wise, even if Olson sometimes punches out the notes like he’s at a hootenanny; and, groundbreaking or not, numbers like “King of Kings” and “Let the Critics Wonder” are confident enough pieces of songwriting to get under your skin after just a listen or two.
“(I’m Not In) Prison” and “People in this Place on Every Side” are enjoyable reminders of the debt the No Depression crowd owed R.E.M.; while the quick tempos on “Bunkhouse” make one wonder where this Minneapolis band would have gone if they’d paid more attention to what their neighbors in the Replacements were doing at the time, the material is certainly good enough to have justified a release back when the band seemed bound for a long career.
Follow Austin Music Source on Facebook and Twitter.
Permalink | | Categories: Reviews
