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Review: 'JACKSON, KATE'
'British Road Movies'   

-  Label: 'Hoo Ha Records'
-  Genre: 'Pop' -  Release Date: '20th May 2016'

Our Rating:
After The Long Blondes split up 8 years ago, Kate Jackson all but gave up on music and spent time working on art projects in Rome. Now back in her home town of Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk. her long postponed debut solo album finally sees the light of day.

Her painterly interests are on not on Italian buildings but on the much maligned Brutalist architecture. This is something you can see in the album cover artwork and in the choice of locations for the video to the first single, The End Of Reason, the strident drive-time song that opens the record.

The ten songs were written with former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, a hero of Jackson's, who also produced the record at Edwyn Collins' West Heath studios in London.

The album was apparently conceived as a series of movie titles although I must say, I don't think I'd rush to see a film entitled Velvet Sofa From No26! It does mean, however, that I don't have to feel guilty about using the much over-used adjective 'cinematic' when describing the music!

Of course, British roads will never have the same mythic potential as the 'lost highways' of America. For one thing they are much shorter so when you go anywhere in the UK you are never too far from home.

For this reason, when Jackson sings "take me to the motorway" on Wonder Feeling the image is not of someone seeking escape and, equally, it is not hard to identify with the line "this city pulls me to pieces" in Metropolis.

Her lyrics have a random quality that sound to me like they were drawn from a travel notebook. She has described the record as, in part, a search for home and belonging.

The centrepiece is 16 Years which has the feel of being more personal and heartfelt than the other songs. It begins with a spoken word section as though lifted from a letter to an old friend, full of memories and regret for the time they lost touch ("I didn't know what you were going through").

Aside from this, hers are fairly conventional pop songs in that they have hooks and choruses. At the same time, there is never a sense that she set out to pen catchy commercial tunes.

Nevertheless, due to Butler's presence there's always an unmistakable Bowie-esque glam-rock swagger, particularly evident on tunes like Stranded and The Atlantic.

It is songs like these that give the record a healthily retro quality, more mid-80s that the early noughties. It might not be enough to soundtrack a British road movie but it would make for lively good travel companion for your next excursion all the same.



Kate Jackson's website
  author: Martin Raybould

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JACKSON, KATE - British Road Movies