Written by: Eric Thompson
Some music is all about the big magic. Those huge wall of sound displays that bury your auditory system like an avalanche. Think Thee Oh Sees. Or Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Then there are those records that are all about the little moments. It’s like the difference between the infinite and the infinitesimal, which isn’t really a difference so much as a matter of depth of focus. The head of a pin contains worlds. Likewise, one whittled down musical moment can mean everything. It’s in the exquisite texture of a muted banjo. Or the ghostly atmospherics conjured by slightly out of tune backing vocals. One person in the corner of the recording space clapping to the song, but only during the chorus. That is where Stone Jack Jones’ Ancestor lives: in the interstices, in the interplay between elements that have been molded to sound just so. If you’ve never lost it over a lone trumpet after a few measures of dissonance, or an airy single note piano melody whisking into a melancholic song, then this might not be the album for you. If you are equipped with that kind of obsessive high-grade sonic microscope, however, there is much beauty to be observed here. Even the songs that end up falling flat on Ancestor (and there are a few) are rife with these intriguing little specimens.
The general ambiance of the album as a whole is by turns pretty and unnerving. The opening track, “O Child,” starts with a slow picked guitar that sounds like it’s being played at the other end of some acoustically resonant tunnel. As Jones starts to strum some minor chords, his weathered voice implores “O child / Won’t you come to me / O child / Won’t you set me free.” And one wonders if something is amiss. What exactly is waiting for us in that tunnel? “Where where where why / Where you run away?” Musically it’s understated, but there is a darkness that reaches into every crevice of this song. Ancestor’s third track is where the ghostly atmospherics come in. “Black Coal” wavers in and out of focus like the apparitions cast about the walls when you half-awaken in the deep night. “Why oh why / Do we die.” And later, “Tell my children daddy’s gone to work in the hole.” There’s something profoundly entrancing at work here. The song implants a yearning to follow those dead miners into the blackness. Then the harmonica struggling for purchase at the end jostles the psyche out of this fog. Gothic folk is definitely an apt description. But Jones isn’t all doom and gloom. “Marvelous” is a banjo and xylophone tinged sonnet to his love. “By the light / The twilight moon / We take our leave.” This one’s just as aurally dense as anything else on the record, but every plucked string and brushed drum radiates contentment. “I heard my true love say / I heard her say / Laaa la la la / Laaa la la la la.”
The centerpiece of Ancestor, though, is “Joy.” The fifth track is one of those perfectly rendered lullabies for the lonely that come along every so often. The lyrics do get a bit syrupy. But sometimes people just need to hear that. “Joy’s a-coming / Takes you by the hand / Takes you ‘cross the river / To the milk and honey land.” I once spent an entire weekend unable to listen to anything but John Hiatt’s “Feels Like Rain.” I tried to listen to other stuff, but would always end up back on Lake Pontchartrain. So it is with “Joy” for the past twenty-four hours. I just can’t pay attention to anything else. When a chorus of female voices joins Stone Jack Jones towards the end to repeat the refrain, “Joy’s a-coming,” to clap and even stomp a bit, it’s heart-flutteringly delicious. And you can’t stop at just one go around with this one.
If you have an ear for understated finery, there is a whole lot to explore on Ancestor. Just try not to get lost in some of these songs. It’s easier than you’ll realize.
