https://www.folkradio.co.uk/2021/08/john-jenkins-if-you-cant-forgive/
John Jenkins – If You Can’t Forgive, You Can’t Love
Fretstore Records – 6 August 2021
Drawing on Americana and Merseybeat roots with influences that embrace John Prine, Bruce Springsteen and The Beatles, the Liverpudlian singer-songwriter makes his new label debut with a solid collection of numbers, all bar one self-penned, on which he’s backed by some of the city’s best session musicians as well as backing vocals and harmonica from Rob Vincent.
Setting a generally downcast mood, it opens with A Stranger to Your Heart (“Wish I could understand/This detachment I feel/You make me sad/Constantly/There’s no benevolence/As far as I can see/And I wish I knew where to go”), the wintery circling guitar notes giving way to drums-driven Dire Straits in the Mohave feel brushed with Amy Chalmers’ strings.
Her violin is joined by Robbie Taylor’s Celtic-hued fiddle (and mandolin) along with Vincent’s bluesy harmonica, for the waltzing sway of Is That What They Say? from whence the title line comes and one of several songs that pivot around a theme of moving on or away. The narrator is replying to a letter from home, having left to try and make a new start. Rather than the expected sense of regret, they are somewhat casual as to the news of old acquaintances and assured that they made the right choice (“I think I’ve got things just right/I’ve got less fear of death/And more hope than I did for life”).
Along with travel, trains loom large too. Firstly, with the fingerpicked, lap steel coloured The Last Train from Baltimore, a factually-based countrified ‘why me’ story-song. It’s sung in the voice of Thomas Wilson, a former train driver remembering the tragedy that cost the lives of kids playing on the line, the papers accusing him of falling asleep at the wheel. It returns to the railway tracks later for Strangers on a Train, a ballad duet with co-writer Alison Benson that has melodic echoes of Don McLean’s Vincent as, reflecting “a million stories behind sad eyes/But just one life”, two passengers each muse on the other’s life (“I wonder if he’s what he seems/A creased old suit, a frayed cuff/Just like him in need of love”). Finally, Karl Parry’s harmonica wailing, When The Morning Comes, combines the two themes as the narrator takes the train away from a doomed relationship (“I took a wrong turn down a one way street/Got my fingers burnt but it felt so sweet”), feeling free but also offering “maybe I can meet you halfway”.
The cover arrives early on, an organ-backed take on Townes Van Zandt’s downbeat gloom of Kathleen, a mood of being at a loss of purpose in life echoed elsewhere on things like the strummed Tom Paxton-ish Living Someone Else’s Life on which, accompanied by lap steel, he sings “They say time my friend/Should be my own to spend/But it feels wasted and misused/Time and again/When I thought it was my friend/It reminded me I had something good to lose/Well I spend my todays/Complaining about yesterdays/And it won’t make tomorrow a better day”.
Elsewhere he takes two words inextricably linked to the idea of romance and turns them on their head as the jaunty Moon And June, featuring the splendidly names Jade Thunder on backing vocals, speaks of a confrontation rather than a caress (“We use to kiss goodnight now all we do is fight/Bickering like children/No logic or insight/Once ‘Mills and Boon’/Has become ‘High Noon’”).
Almost inevitably, the jazzily lazing tempo The End of Summer, burnished with strings and trumpet, Julia Fiebelkorn on backing vocals, muses on mortality (“I don’t want to live forever/But it would be nice to have some more time/Do those things I always wanted to/Leave this world with a smile/I don’t know if we get a second chance/Each day could be the last dance”) with a backdrop melody that conjures thoughts of Jimmy Webb and Glen Campbell.
There are a couple more story-songs too. The first is the simple, finger-picked Cracks that paints a sad portrait of a girl who, fired from Woolworths when it was assumed she’d pilfered the till, her parents having given up on her long before dad died from booze, has fallen through the cracks. The song implies she is now lost and contemplating ending it all. Then, frisky with fiddle, banjo, mandolin and spoons and with Vincent on backing, the country rolling Hearts And Minds features another girl beaten down by life and her lover (“Make up covers the bruises”), wondering where it all went wrong and in need of just a little compassion to give her the strength to “find herself/And pick herself up from the floor”, but her heart unable to do what her head tells her.
It isn’t all grief and gloom, though. Taking a gospel piano and handclaps journey down its Beatles pathways, The Wrong Side of Sadness finds a ray of hope in a girl in the bar (“I’ve been on the wrong side of sadness/For too long/Maybe that’s why I wrote this song”), even if she does leave with someone else. With Lee Shone on piano, Tony Peers on trumpet and Dave Orford driving the drums along, it closes with the jangling guitars and sweeping/pizzicato strings defiance of Desert Hearts (“I’ve been down so many times/You can take all my money/But you won’t get my pride”), throwing in a Trump reference (“Weren’t you the guy/Who wanted to build that wall?/Peace love and understanding always wins”). Even with the bittersweet ending (“I’m watching the flowers grow/From my front porch/Where will I be tomorrow?/Does anybody really know?…Feel I’ve lived more than one lifetime/Will I ever get to see you, again?”) it leaves it on a definite musical high as Webb, Bacharach, The Searchers, Nick Lowe and McCartney come together for a joyful summery hook-laden indie-pop free-flying balloon ride that makes you want to push the replay button and listen to the whole album all over again.
Tour Dates
Aug 18th Shrewsbury – The Old Post Office
Aug 19th Worcester – The Sociable Beer Company
Aug 20th Oxford – The Mad Hatter
Aug 22nd London – The Gladstone Arms
Aug 23rd Bath – The Bell Inn
Aug 24th Cambridge – The Unitarian Church
Aug 25th Birmingham – The Wellington Pub
Aug 28th Thornton Hough Village Club
Aug 30th Leek – The Cock Inn
Aug 31st Sheffield – The Shakespeare Pub
Sep 1st Liverpool – The Philharmonic Dining Room
More: https://johnjenkinsmusic.com/
JOHN JENKINS
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