[rating-7.00]
Burlington, Vermont’s own Henry Jamison recounts a story in song, almost a rite of passage, during his first full-length LP The Wilds. The intimate, largely acoustic setting of this record aids in turning universal, not to mention accessible, his first-person experience(s) and healthily-detached observations.
The literary detail Jamison applies to lyrics like those of the title song, match the immaculate sound quality producer Ethan West captured in a recording studio nestled in the Green Mountains. And the ambient sonics that billow around Jamison as he plays and sings on “Bright Future” render dream-like that track; evocative in much the same way as Mark Kozelek and Red House Painters; Jamison is more personal and direct, even as cuts like “The Jacket” radiate an almost ghostly air.
The real achievement of The Wilds, however, lies in how consistent Jamison and West maintain the atmosphere they introduce early in the record, even as the pair inject the most nuanced changes as the dozen cuts progress. “Through A Glass” is ever so slightly more upbeat than the tracks that precede it and the abrupt cold stop of this abbreviated number render it brisker than it might at first sound.
“Sunlit Juice,” to name just one track, might come off a bit precious if it weren’t for the geographic references to the Queen CityHenry Jamison includes. It’s around this point in the record, as well as “Black Mountain,” that his vocal tone lightens appreciably, so hearing him at this juncture and beyond, is less like eavesdropping on an internal dialogue and more absorbing a travelogue. The switch of perspectives is one of genuine poetry.
So, as wordy as are some of these compositions, like “Dallas Love Field,” the quick succession of cuts on The Wilds conjures a pace that not only retains the attention, but invites repeated listenings to catch more of what’s going on. And the wordless falsetto singing of Jamison’s on that cut makes for a dramatic segue into “Real Peach,” explaining in part how this number, released as a single, garnered such public acclamation (as did his 2016 EP The Rains).
Further clues exist in the tone of the man’s vocal delivery, surrounded by the light, gentle banjo line throughout the arrangement. Henry sounds more authoritative here than anywhere on the album, which will most likely call for a careful reading of lyrics to songs like “The Last Time I Saw Adrianne,” printed inside this CD booklet (where musician credits are unfortunately missing). Succumbing to that temptation only makes The Wilds even more of a complete experience and, quite likely, one of the most uniformly satisfying records of 2017.
