Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The songs we sing to ourselves when we find ourselves contemplating life, its boundless mystery, its significant wonder, and the times when we feel that the melancholic joy threatens to engulf us, those are the moments in which we look upon at whatever time they appear as the guiding lights, the soliloquys from the comfort of the idyll of the front porch.

It is from the front porch that John Jenkins has seen the orange light that swings as the breeze hits the Wirral coast, that catches the waves upon the River Mersey as sends the flurry and the strength into the sound of every artist that lives either side of the great unitor.

Ahead of his forthcoming album, Growing Old (Songs From My Front Porch), John Jenkins takes the much needed stroll down memory lane, the one that we far too often take for granted and see the sights available through rose-tinted glasses and neglect the power that truth can have to keep the subject grounded, the crush on the soul which brings out the finest words, the poet and the reverential in the same sitting; this is the effect that Jackson’s Farm has on the listener, a song of whispering regret coupled with the pleasure of Mr. Jenkin’s eye for detail.

True to the ethos of the new album, it is the elegance of the stripped back production, the timing of Amy Chalmers inflection on the strings, that make Jackson’s Farm a compelling single, a narrative of the times that underlays the feeling of a different, more personal and thought of time.

If Jackson’s Farm is anything to go by, then the grasp of the delicate precision that is weaved in this bountiful song, will be a huge feature an insight of how someone looks upon their life in retrospect, a guide to which John Jenkins has always magnificently pushed and rewarded his fans with.

A beautiful song, John Jenkins once more takes the hand of the listener and helps them find a way to their own soul.

Ian D. Hall