Jack Cade’s third solo studio album was written and recorded during lockdown. The album title seems to me to be an accurate summation of the current state of the ‘Great’ British empire.
The Englishman's growling, sometimes slurred, baritone voice are of someone looking at the real world without a filter. Cade says “This album explores the growing realization that a lot of what I have taken for granted as being truth is far from it in my little bubble of life.“
In the opening track,It Ain't Easy, he reflects on the near impossibility of separating fake from fact while in The Awakening he asks the rhetorical question "Should we be bleeding?"
The arrangements are sparse and unfussy, ensuring the fire and brimstone content of the bleak lyrics is not compromised. Cade is backed by Ben Cox-Smith on dobro slide guitar and Hana Maria on violin with Adam Perry and Mark Tudor adding drums and percussion.
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In The Amber Lights, he looks back grimly to his roots growing up in a rundown and "long forgotten seaside town". Cade doesn't do cheery. Saviours & Sinners is like a bruised sea shanty and the title Some Bruises Don't Fade speaks for itself.
The misanthropic What do the People Say reaffirms the impression that this is the sound of a singer facing and embracing his demons like a preacher man who has lost the consolation of his faith.
Jack Cade's website
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