Review Summary: I thought I knew it all / How the mighty fall
It’s hard to really get a feel for Jake Bugg as a musician when his style - and career in general - extends to little more than comparisons. First he sounds like Bob Dylan. Then he throws in a little half-assed punk with his Dylan - and given the relatively short yearlong gap between his self-titled and
Shangri La, it’s no wonder the latter felt unnecessarily rushed. Then
On My One drops and suddenly he’s The Stone Roses and pop crooner and
rapper, with no rhyme or reason. Regardless of stylistic consistency or songwriting quality, there’s always been a certain honesty missing from the equation, no glimpse behind the curtain. In many ways,
On My One’s aimlessness was the perfect representation of the young singer-songwriter at the time, with so many influences on his sleeve that the sleeve disappeared entirely. It was a mess. It wasn’t consistent. And it certainly didn’t give any hint as to what the hell Bugg wanted to be.
Hearts That Strain is undeniably consistent, and a return to form for Jake Bugg. Above all, there’s a newfound restraint within the songwriting, with soft rim cracks and fluttering organs placing an emphasis on atmosphere in tracks like “How Soon The Dawn”. It’s also a
focused album, expanding on a rootsy, country sound reminiscent of The Wallflowers - snide joke about Bugg trading one Dylan for another aside. The problem lies in how eager it is to fully embrace this sound, without solving Bugg’s perpetual identity crisis. With contributions from the Memphis Boys, Dan Auerbach and Noah Cyrus - in the form of a rather limp duet - there’s a small amount of pedigree pushing Bugg along on his tour of Americana. He never really uses this opportunity to make something
inspired though. Instead, he buys into the sound, seemingly more content to produce a product of his environment than a product of himself. In fact, it’s rather disingenuous for “a poor boy from Nottingham” to be evoking “Southern Rain” and quintessentially vague evangelical metaphors a year after trying to revive
Madchester of all things, don’t you think?
Even with this new direction, the album covers the same ground that Bugg refuses to move away from. We still get the same overabundance of lethargic ballads - one of which
has to be placed at Track Six, and will probably be one of the album’s singles, for tradition’s sake. Bugg still sings about the same lovelorn scenarios that
may or may not include himself, if “The Man On Stage” isn’t a thin enough veil. Not all of these recycled ideas can even be implemented successfully, as the Nashville atmosphere dampens all of Jake’s attempts to bring some British bite into the album. Tracks meander along blissfully, as if Bugg were a tourist admiring the sights, and while it makes for easy listening, there’s little variation in pace or tone or
anything, really. There’s no hint of self-awareness, no tongue in cheek; it’s another case of a drearily serious
real musician making
real music for
real audiences.
In spite of how pleasant the album is as a whole,
Hearts That Strain doesn’t really make any progress, and that’s the most disappointing thing about it. Outside of giving his sound a fresh coat of paint every now and then, Bugg hasn’t got a lot of options. From the start, the core of his appeal has lied in being a young man playing old music. The problem with building a legacy on the foundations of the past is that when the time comes to move forward, there’s so much more ground to cover, and it’s not always possible to do that. Sometimes it’s just easier to stay there. So you stay there, and so the world moves on.
