Durand Jones has been a long-standing figure in the modern soul scene for a decade now. His passionate vocals echo with heritage and forethought alike as his elastic falsettos stretch across arrangements that play on 60’s soul tropes as much as they reimagine the genre. Jones has been fronting his band, The Indications, for three full LPs now, each one getting better than the next as the band collectively evolves with each release. While Jones is no stranger to the spotlight, his debut album as a full solo act sees the crooner leveraging his success and talents to display his wide range of tastes in sonics to paint a vivid picture of nostalgia and acceptance. Wait Til I Get Over is our expansive invitation to Hillaryville, Louisiana, the hometown of Jones and the town that inspired the sonically ambitious LP. Over a decade in the making, Wait Til I Get Over features 12 sprawling tracks and Jones doesn’t waste a second, every moment on his proper solo debut is seen as an opportunity for the artist to connect not only himself but all of us with his roots through elements of gospel, bluesy-rock, and classic southern soul.
His time in The Indications has proven that Jones is a fearless creator, ignoring expectations in order to properly display his emotions through creative pursuits. On Wait Til I Get Over, Jones takes that idea and reconfigures it into a mode of transportation for the listener, taking us on a tour of his humble beginnings and the experiences that fuel his music. In doing so, Jones is achieving a level of sonic eloquence that toes the line of modern soul tropes and experiments with what the genre could become. The album uses unique drum patterns, sweeping harmonies, and complex song structures with each little element representing a memory that gets evoked when Jones thinks of his hometown. The album attempts to compile a lifetime of memories and feelings into one large picture, using unique brush strokes in order to convey a feeling of nostalgia while still looking toward the future. Wait Til I Get Over has Jones truly revealing himself for the first time in his storied career, and he didn’t take the easy route to land at such a vulnerable and daring debut.
Durand Jones uses nuanced musicianship and unconventional song structures to achieve the colorful imagery that makes his solo debut so layered. The way Jones was able to take specific elements from genres and melt them down into a sound all to his own is enough to blow away even the harshest critic, but it’s those small elements that rear their head at the oddest times that give the album its personality. The title track of the album is strictly acapella for the first minute of its runtime, allowing Jones to display his lowest gruff and his most soaring falsetto while even a more straight-forward soul song like “I Want You” leans on syncopation for its infectious rhythms. This study of what the genre can be separates Jones from his contemporaries, he deploys just enough of his natural soul tendencies to provide a rush for longtime fans while challenging himself to expand his sound in order to fully place the listener in Hillaryville.
Wait Til I Get Over is as conceptually ambitious as it is sonically. Durand Jones’ debut is over a decade in the making now, an amount of pressure that could only equate to a doctor pre-surgery. Jones implements the precision of a surgeon with his grandiose creativity. Like the small-town soul that he is, Jones acts as a liaison between his hometown and those who have never even heard of Hillaryville before the LP, using his smooth yet unpredictable vocals to regale tales of his upbringing that focus on the uncertainty of how our pasts will affect our future. A tear-jerker like “That Feeling” uses ambiance to emphasize the longing in his words and the ever-ominous future, combining the ambitions of his vision that are flushed out through his storytelling with the audacious arrangements. This meeting of varying experiments is at the core of Wait Til I Get Over, Jones is able to challenge himself while still keeping the narrative of the LP intact, an expedition that could’ve given us countless results. What we got was an album that sits in the middle ground of the past and future, toying with the present in order to give the listener a full experience rather than a simple collection of songs.
