A cynic would say that not only did Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s South Park raise a few laughs (although am I the only one that thinks that we’ve seen enough of Mr Hankey?), but that it endowed Canada with a national character. In short, they are a bunch of Kraft Dinner-eating weirdos obsessed with fart jokes and riding on the subway.
Fortunately neither of Oxford’s musical Canadians conform to this stereotype. More about soft-rock troubadour Jonathan Seet in a week or two but for now we have an enjoyably placid and professional record from Miriam Jones. Although her fine 2008 album ‘Being There’ suggested a close affinity with Nashville, her follow up EP ‘Inside Free’ is significantly poppier, but with the odd jazzy nuance.
The record opens strongly with ‘Holding Bay’, featuring Jez Carr’s excellent, stoic piano (part cocktail bar, part Baptist church) alongside Jones’ chirpy, twangy alto. The production is clear, uncluttered and confident. When reviewing ‘Being There’ last year, your reviewer had a bit of harmless fun with some of Jones’ over-elaborate lyric formations (literacy occasionally straying into fussiness), but the writing on this song and others on this record shows much more control than previously. I like her image of a songwriter churning out songs in the dining room with nothing to say and with no intended audience. If there’s any justice in the world that will be Chris Martin’s fate in a year or two, not to mention the guy from the Kooks.
For heterosexual men, the next song, ‘Down’ is located far into ‘Guilty Pleasure’ territory. To guess the genre, you only need to imagine Renee Zelwegger belting the chorus out into her hairbrush during the opening credits of Bridget Jones III: The F****d Up Fat B***h (directed by Eli Roth. Well, we can always hope). The verse has a touch of REM’s ‘Nightswimming’ to it, which adds a dash of credibility, but really this is one for the ladies. Jones’ singing is unusually emotional, and a couple of the high notes are on the strident side, but it’s good to see this usually laid-back artist giving it some. Again, Carr’s playing is first-rate.
The title of ‘Chase Me’ sounds a little risqué, (though not as much as BBC Oxford’s latest discovery, Julia E K Thomas’s ‘Come Get Naked With Me’- some people will do anything to get on the radio!) but is another of Jones’ religious songs, with its hint of the women meeting the risen Christ in the garden. Musically, it plays it very safe, but as a fan of The Band, I find the churchy piano figures hard to resist.
‘Routine Runaway’, at least on first listen, sounds like a jazz cocktail spiked with valium, but the melodies are strong and the singing very lovely. There is added poignancy when you realise that this is Jones’ farewell to Canada, with England as a distant, uncertain possibility.
Thus, ‘Inside Free’ represents a fine follow-up to ‘Being There’, neither eclipsing it nor giving us more of the same. We now have plenty of evidence that Miriam can make extremely good records, but she needs to get out there and show her fans that she can cut it live.