Skip the opener, and bathe in a bountiful bath of gloomy ennui. (You’re worth it!) Peter Alexander Jobson releases his first solo album.

Release Date: 15th November 2024

Label: Alexander Songs

Format: CD / Vinyl / Digital

I AM KLOOT

Well, with not one, but two of the erstwhile I Am Kloot band touring and releasing, it might be understandable if John Bramwell, the frontman of that band, got the more credit, but, hold that thought, and let me direct you to this instead.

Jobson was the bassist and keyboard player, and has one of those dark brown voices that just ooze ennui, in a haze of tobacco smoke and whisky. I’m a sucker for that sort of delivery and he doesn’t disappoint, extracting maximum pathos from these well drawn songs.

Apparently one description of Jobson is as the North East’s answer to Serge Gainsbourg, with references also as varied as Leonard Cohen and Jake Thackray, which adds into a peculiarly schizoid whole, if still somewhat intriguing. Given I love one of that trio, loathe another and am largely indifferent to the third, see if you can guess which is which. Making it maybe easy, I found it confusing why the album opens as it does, with a live track, Jobson alone at the piano, polite laughter greeting each line of Holiday, a humorous song better left to last. Luckily it hadn’t been the track that earlier grabbed my attention.

THE NIGHT OF THE FIRE

Choosing to ignore that false start, Mountain is a much better proposition, a country tinged clip clop saunter that is perfect for his lugubrious delivery. Sounding like a cross between Nick Cave and the aforesaid Cohen, it is a song with some swagger, a relation in mood to I’m Your Man by the latter and nothing much at all by the former, bar the voice and piano. It immediately has you forget the false start, and sets the table for The Night Of The Fire. Similarly spare, piano and something strumming the only accompaniment, his doleful voice is a baritone croon that also carries textures of Tindersticks’ Stuart Staples. This is always a good thing. I’m in.

Taxi Supplies has a backdrop of brushed drums, and the sort of piano that accompanies silent film weepies. With lines like “If tears well up in your eyes, and your mouth runs dry, I can be by your side“, he sounds entirely convincing, yet without any expectation of that offer ever being met. An exquisitely heart wrenching vocal wills you wishing his becoming the hero of the hour, but , hey, it doesn’t work like that, at least in songs like this. Go Go, after some scratchy sound, is another whimsical construction, allying Hawaiian guitar with ukulele and echoed keys. The voice is darker, browner and more despondent than ever, the backing adding a critique to any unwarranted optimism. It is wonderfully wonky and the woe weeps volumes.

FOOLISH BOY

Foolish Boy has, and is, one of those internal voices that mock the valiant as we(!) pursue the vainglorious. Please, assure me this is a place well known, as Jobson plumbs the murky depths of burgeoning disappointment due. It’s short and harsh, well recognised and realistic, a tell tale cynical witness over a shimmery backdrop. It would be funny were it not so real. I’m loving this.

Please Please Please is a further sub two minute entreaty of poignant pathos and I’m actually beginning to worry about the singer’s state of mind. Powerful stuff, these vignettes ring so much truer than the love, love, love of the charts, few brave enough to admit and accept. Brevity continues, threefold, into Home, a stark C&W ballad: “Every day now is a duel between me and the cold”. Eek, simple of tune and, within the time allotted, repetitive, it is a construction of gaunt beauty.

A change then, after these three short snapshots, as next up is Kesta, a near 12 minute monologue about an individual, an acquaintance, of that name. In his untempered Northumbrian brogue, he extrapolates over a slow arrangement that reeks of Northern Soul. The Tindersticks connection is again apparent, if with less a flowing train of fantasy, more a gallingly stumbling description of a reality best forgotten. It sounds personal, both as in real, and as if he is telling you, the listener, and you only, in confidence and against better judgement. It is entirely absorbing. Clangs of guitar, runs of piano and the relentless drumbeat keep the momentum going. “He was a rogue, but he had a good heart.”

JUST CAUSE I’M DEAD

A title like Just Cause I’m Dead suggests no sudden uplift in the overall mood, but it, sort of, is. A semi-theatrical musical anecdote, it is gloriously black and bleak, with what sounds like musical saw singing behind Jobson’s delicious negativity: “Just because I’m dead, it doesn’t mean I’m not around any more, just because I’m dead, it doesn’t mean I don’t care“. Wonderful. A choir of dysfunctional studio FX add to the feel of a wake in a backstreet bar, the piano honky tonking with raggged glory.

This leads only room for the nearly title track, as in Burn The Ration Books, with a slow and momentous build of fauxchestration, a salutatory tale of warning, a warning around the duplicity of expectations beyond anything other than the end. Which ends much as you fear it might, ahead an angelic choir offering an unexpected alternative. A trebly guitar twangs and I am hopeful. And grateful for this remarkable project.

Here’s that closing track, in all it’s intensity:

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