Reviews
Artist:Ian Jones Album: Results Not Typical
Label: Thin Silver
Tracks: 11
Website: https://www.ianjonesmusic.com/
Born in Seattle in the shadow of Mount Rainier, abandoned by his father and raised on the sounds of The Beatles, Dylan, Willie, Waylon and David Allan Coe, this is Jones' debut full length album on which he's backed with musicians who've variously served time with REM, Ryan Adams, Father John Misty, Fiona and Elliott Smith. Firmly rooted in folksy Americana, it opens with 'Rollin'', a road song about relocating to California, before keyboards introduce an initial bluesy rock swell to the pedal-steel laced slow walking regret-laden 'You Can't' ("You think there's a way to take back what you say but it's permanent") before heading down the horns-bolstered mid-tempo Southern country soul boogie 'Lost Highway'. Staying on themes of freedom, leaving and finding a way back ("Take me by the hand and lead me back home/I see the shadows falling but I ain't got no place left to go/They say that better days are coming they're just not saying when/But someday we'll all be together again"), you might discern a hint of Skynyrd in the DNA of 'Someday'.
Backed by piano and walking beat drums, 'Athens Smiles' is another rolling road song that charts a similar narrative path singer-songwriter that begins with the protagonist "running out of Athens/The only home she'd ever known" and heading for California down a highway peppered with well-worn metaphors ("you know that moss don't grow wild on a rolling stone") before ending up "rolling back down into Athens/Watching Athens smile again".
The achingly melancholic if somewhat lyrically overwritten 'She Is Lost' ("I figure out/That I've got no place left to run to, and now that time has passed/I see the strength in going nowhere/And I'm going nowhere fast") is another piano track, here with decided 'Tumblweed Connection' Elton echoes, as indeed does the following 'Again', a murder ballad ("Sun went down and I never looked back/Ditched the body 'neath the railroad tracks/Crossed the border and headed south/Where it was easier to fit in").
In contrast to much of the album, 'Without You I Am Lost' has a funkier, horny, percussive New Orleans groove, but it closes out in the more dominant flavours, the final run beginning with the pedal steel-stained ache of the missed opportunity 'You're Gone' ("I gathered up my courage and walked up to you because I wanted you to dance/But you walked out in front of me straight out the door before I got the chance…I wrote you a letter, but the only person who saw it was me"), the similarly looking for love barroom piano, brushed snares waltzing 'Have Mercy' and, finally, the closing reflective and slowly gathering leaving home piano ballad 'Goodbyes Are the Hardest Word' where he marries Jackson Browne influences to a distorted David Gilmore-styled guitar solo.
He may have taken his time to come to making music, but the seasoned life-lived quality he brings to his brand of Northwest Americana has surely been worth the wait.
Mike Davies
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Fatea Showcase Sessions
The Fatea Showcase Sessions are a series of downloads featuring acts that we've really enjoyed and think that more people should get the chance to hear.
Pirate is the current session and features 16 fantastic artists check out the website to find out more about them and download your copy
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