Total honesty is required sometimes.
The first time I had heard of Noble Jacks was last summer when their “Stay Awake” album was already out. Something about their tour appeared in the MV inbox and I put the story on about them.
I added a video to the press release, and “Stay Awake” the song, rocketed along. Americana, kind of. A bit of Wille and the Bandits rustic flavours, a bit.
But I heard something else. First I thought: “I’ll bet they are better live” then the more I listened, the more I kept coming back to one band: The Levellers.
The problem is that because they are from Brighton and because they use violin liberally, I thought I was getting myself mired in cliché.
Now, they have re-released “Stay Awake”, the album, with four extra songs tagged onto the end, so I thought I’d best have a little look at things to see if I was talking nonsense.
Then I found this on the bands website: “Noble Jacks truly started in 2014, with Will [Page] determined to replicate what he’d observed in the audience when he first saw The Levellers headline their own Beautiful Days festival.”
Ok, in more honesty, I like them, but in truth, I am not massively well-versed in The Levellers. I have seen them live a few times. The first time, last year, I went with a friend (a huge fan with their lyrics tattooed on her arm) and she’d said to me on the way there: “you’ll never see anything like this crowd, there is a real sense of togetherness.”
Which is why I was so interested in this from the bands incredible multi-instrumentalist Page adding: “I felt the reaction from the crowd, the unity and sense of community… and knew then that I could inspire the same sensation from my own music.”
He has, I am sure. I haven’t seen Noble Jacks play live yet, but there’s something in these songs, something in their sound that says they’ll be wonderful.
Don’t get me wrong either, they are great on record. “Ten Times” is catchy has you like, and Will’s playing is complimented by the guitar of Matt Deveson. These are clever songs, not written from the perspective you’d imagine they’d come from.
There’s a bit of 80s pop about “Lights Out”, but the opening line about “another hot night, another pale face” is poetically dark. “Rely On Love” which does – honestly – sound like a jam by Mark Chadwick’s aforementioned boys and those Bandits I talked about, is a cracker of a thing. A shot of three minute joy – and if it wouldn’t sound ace in a field in the sun, then I will pack this website in.
Elsewhere there is a glorious subtlety about the way they do things. Some soul in “Morning Light” and the drums add some real depth and size to the track. “A New Beginning” is made for radio and the way they use harmonies is really impressive, while “Lift Me From The Floor” makes good on those Americana comparisons and shows why they are just as at home with a C2C crowd as The Dead South, say.
Whatever they do, though, be it “This Rose” with its hoedown feel, or the outright blues banger of “What Did You Say” (check out the slide guitar and harmonica at the start!) it sounds like a blend of all kinds of things in one original package.
“This Is Real” sounds like a statement on the band as a whole, “Enjoy The Ride” – the single to herald the re-release – mixes its urgency with some real reflective thoughts on male depression, and if that suggests a band with plenty to say, then “Road Of Death” rather underlines that they aren’t the stereotypical outfit.
There is, though, wherever the lyrics go, a sense of enjoyment about the whole record. “Noble Ground” is the work of a contented as well as skilled band, and “Dreams Carry Me” is something that you can imagine Seth Lakeman doing. The way the violin is used here is genuinely original.
“Stay Awake” is a mighty opening salvo. It is the work of a band that obviously is not interested in anything other than building a career. They will evolve, yes, and who knows, they might even make a better record than this (it’d be a good one if they did, mind you) but there is definitely something to mark them out as very much their own men, even if it’s not hard to spot the influences.
Rating 8.5/10
