Jackdaw4: Gramophone Logic

When you come across that rare album that arrives fully realized and oozing with rich, melodic pop talent, the temptation is to drop everything and go shout its praises from the rooftop. That’s where you may have heard me recently, apprising my neighbors of the many merits to be found in Jackdaw4’s Gramophone Logic.

This UK band’s unlikely debut arrives polished to a high studio sheen, showing influences that are sometimes obvious, sometimes less so, and a firm knowledge of how to craft great pop songs. These incredibly accomplished and well-produced songs are the brainchildren of pop veteran Willie Dowling, who was last seen with the band Sugar Plum Fairies (and Honeycrack prior to that). Dowling adds vocals, keyboards, bass, guitars, ukulele, and banjo, when not producing, engineering, and mixing the effort. He’s joined by the expert talents of Greg Hatwell (vocals, guitars and percussion), Andy Lewis (vocals, bass, double bass) and Andy Robertson (drums, percussion), along with a number of guest musicians.

Born out of the remains of a band project known as the Celebrity Squares, Jackdaw4 delivers 10 songs that show a wide range of sounds that derive from the rock gods Lennon and McCartney and Wilson. This is melodic, layered rock with great harmonic and guitar/keyboard riffs that verges on the meticulously symphonic at times, recalling any number of other bands (ELO, Jellyfish, Queen, the Wondermints, XTC, and Squeeze, to name a few). There’s not a single three-chord rocker to be found here — rather, Dowling creates complex and energetic songs that vary in tempo and arrangement.

The album opens impressively with “This Is Your Life”. From the first guitar chord’s strum, we’re off on a rollicking musical journey. The song is a lush rocker that takes on the superficial trappings of fame as worthless: “This is your life and these were your moments / This is your life / It might as well be done / You may as well lay down / If this is your life, then you can keep it”.

Many bands aspire to capture that signature Jellyfish sound (Queen meets Beach Boys and then some), but few succeed. “The Day I Wrote the Book” shines with Spilt Milk-style harmonies and hooks; Jellyfish fans will be most pleased. Dowling and associates give us a short yet sweet taste of that marvelous sound in a song that talks about capturing each day’s nasty details on the page (and references the Beach Boys and their harmonies directly).

“King for a Day” shows us a different side of Jackdaw4. The vocals are laidback (and remind me of Del Amitri’s Justin Currie) and there’s a different rock flavor at work. This is a song about reflecting back on what once was a grand time but is no longer: “Washed up, pretty sad, look at what you had before / Hopped up ’til the highs and lows feel all the same / King for just one day / Now you know for sure it goes away / It’s a world away from now / And it seems so close somehow”.

Jackdaw4 goes funky with “Everything I See”, which features great syncopated rhythms and octave-apart vocals that serve as an additional hook. This is song as social censure, taking a hard, cynical look at the state of things, politics and otherwise, ultimately declaring “the future’s not what it used to be”.

It’s Wondermints meets Jellyfish on the sweet “Karaoke Ballet”, a harmony-filled eulogy for the death of live music. Alas, the beautiful people now need synchronized dancing in a karaoke ballet, no thinking allowed. The lyrics are great (“Blessed are the brash and bombastic”) — but unfortunately, they’re not included in the CD booklet, one of the only flaws to be found with this release.

“Stupid” kicks things up into high gear, in a song that has Squeeze elements alongside those from latter-day Beatles and more. This band proves here there is a happy medium between intelligence and rock — now if only there was a commercial outlet for it.

One of my favorites is “Deep and Meaningless”, another song that employs Squeeze-like octave-apart vocals, along with additional vocals from Eva Rice. It’s another lush rocker that picks apart modern society and its faults (lack of trust, madness, sadness, democracy is dead, etc.), but ultimately there’s consolation in the music’s mindless dance beat (amen).

There’s a spacier feel to the waltz that is “Strange Attraction”, with its smooth Jeff Lynne/George Harrison-type guitars and rich harmonies. Dowling’s acidic lyrics are on target again, skewering our latest social addictions and ruses (“Too much is never enough”). And the soft piano-based ballad “Maybe You Know” shows the quieter side of Jackdaw4.

The CD closes with the grand horns that announce the opening of “Happy? (Dumka)”. This opening then morphs into a marvelous harmony-infused song that successfully manages to marry Beach Boys with White Album-era Beatles, as the lyrics go about listing any number of things to be happy for (some sillier than others). There’s also a short bonus song tagged onto the final track (“Think Too Much”).

All told, Gramophone Logic is an aural wonder to behold. It’s fresh yet familiar, a debut that surprisingly sounds like a band at its mature height. Dowling and his talented compadres take a rich mélange of past influences and translate them into something new and compelling and most certainly worth your ear time. This is highly stylized power pop/rock with lush harmonies and complex musical arrangements in the service of good songwriting. In the end, Gramophone Logic amounts to something truly special — a debut album that’s melodic, addictive, confident and impressive.