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Review: 'Rundle, Jesse Blake'
'Next Town's Trees'   

-  Label: 'Bandcamp'
-  Genre: 'Folk' -  Release Date: '3.3.23.'

Our Rating:
Next Town's Trees is the latest album by Jesse Blake Rundle an American folk artist from Boise Idaho. This is his first album since leaving the church, coming out as gay, finding sobriety and focusing on his music. This album may also make you realize just how much of America's coded language for Gay life revolves around analogies involving trees.

The album opens with the first single Fire slowly fading in, this cool folk jazz, questioning vocals slowly revealing themselves against the brass, as he hopes they can all break bread together once the fire is dowsed.

Fools & Ghosts is ethereal folk with percussion that sounds like it's taken from a sparse techno record. As Jesse sings of coming storms on the wild water, a sepulchral middle section as this does all sorts of things musically.

I Want You To Know is a slow careful declaration of who Jesse is, this is hushed whispered words, secrets being told, something that made Jesse need a brass band to fully explain, hopefully in a way that doesn't anger anyone.

White Hot almost sounds a bit like George Ezra, as this very spare song of love, longing regret, slowly unfurls as cool as ice rather than White Hot.

Yes, I'm Angry is a song for our times certainly, but what is Jesse so gently angry about? Well, the fact he's had to come out of the closet admitting to who he is, with the attendant fall out, leaving the church, what he's left behind, including alcohol, on the least angry sounding song imaginable, as Jesse obviously believes in serving his anger cold.

Hand In Hand has a gospel choir-tinged edge to the intro, to this introspective song for lovers walking along a deserted street voices echoing out of the walls at a funereal pace.

Next Town's Trees pulses gently as you wonder what kind of trees this is about, as well as how much wood is involved, as Jesse's vocals go higher almost screaming in ecstasy against the skittery percussive edges, as he feels like he can move on becoming who he really is with the Next Town's Trees that feel more solid than his hometowns ones.

The album closes with Stones that sounds a bit like Imagine in it's use of the piano line, but with voices calling from the distance and less troubling philosophy, this feels like a eulogy for Jesse's past life as he enters the new one. Brass accents on towards a different future.

Find out more at https://jesseblakerundle.bandcamp.com/album/next-towns-trees https://www.facebook.com/jesseblakerundle/ https://www.jesseblakerundle.com/





  author: simonovitch

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