JACOB DE BERKER – Jacob de Berker (download)

Jacob de BerkerJacob de Berker is a singer-songwriter from the West Country now living on a boat in London, a popular lifestyle choice these days. This five-track EP is his second release, following the single, ‘Ballad Of A One Horse Town’, available as a download from his website.

The opening track is ‘A Drinking Song’, a delightfully warped picture of the weekend in any city. “We spend Friday nights in caves underground” he sings in the first verse and immediately conjures up the images of Bacchanalian dens of entertainment. Drink is also a motif in ‘Move’ for which he switches from guitar to banjo. Jacob has a real down on himself and the rest of humanity here and the bitter lyrics are almost disguised by a delicate tune and a fragile voice. Both ‘Butterfly Nets’ and ‘No Captain’ are about nostalgia, in the sense of it being pain. In the former he’s trying to hold on to something, in the latter it seems that he’s trying leave the past behind. Nostalgia is like that, I guess.

It might be hoped that the final track, ‘Daffodils’, might bring a little levity to the set but no, despite the optimism of the chorus in which, as “the bard of all things unrequited”, he sets out to do something foolish.

At the moment Jacob is very much a one man band with technical assistance from Larry Curr but his songwriting merits a wider audience and maybe backing from the business..

Dai Jeffries

Buy from: https://jacobdeberker.bandcamp.com/album/jacob-de-berker

Jacob’s single , ‘Ballad Of A One Horse Town’, recorded live:


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