STEVIE JONES AND THE WILDFIRES – Getting There

Getting ThereGetting There is the fourth album from Stevie Jones and the Wildfires. It’s due to be launched on August 16th at The Musician in Leicester.  Sometimes albums slap you round the face when you first play them, others creep up on you and you suddenly hear something rather splendid that had passed you on first listen. For me, Getting There was one of the latter – but it’s now a rather glorious thirty minutes / eight tracks album which I keep playing (far longer than I need to play it to write a review).

There are two covers on the album, the remainder are penned by Jones. The album opens with ‘So Far East’ – nice interplay between Jones’ acoustic and Mark Gill’s electric guitar to create a suitably thoughtful ambience on a track about driving to the edge of the land and wondering about a relationship “Will you come in with the breeze / Ride on a wild wild storm / Caress or crash on the rocks / Drift out forever lost … It feels so right /When you’re with me”. It’s the opening track and the picture on the gatefold sleeve has a lighthouse and beach on the right-hand side and sea and boat on the left-hand side – an auditory and a visual scene setting for the album.

’14 Days That Followed A Supermoon’ bounces along with jangly guitar. ‘Trumpets’ is the Mike Scott cover, quieter than the Waterboys’ original but with a lyric mixing love song and natural world that neatly ties into the two tracks it follows.

… and then we get to ‘Threshold’. This is one of the gems on the album, spoken word above a growing instrumental behind it. I know of nothing like this other than the albums of Duir. This is good.

Suitably shocked out of the earlier love songs by ‘Threshold’, the next track is ‘Skeleton Trees’ – harsher tune, wailing lead guitar, a lyric that moves to “Poisonous Berries/Skeleton Trees … Cracks in the pavement / Blood oozing through”. The track is more rock than folk. The imagery is changed from the love songs earlier – Nature on this track has become nettles, ferns and weeds; the people referenced in the song are hookers, dealers, beggars and muggers.

‘Beautiful Deletion’ follows – gentler again in the music but a lyric that links deletion with the point you move someone out of your life.  “And the woman who lay by my side / Now a ghost faded into the dawn …  And I don’t mind if she thinks of me now or not / Beautiful deletion”. We might all have been there, but very few of us have turned the end of a relationship into a computerised deletion. Rather neat. It’s followed by the second cover of the album, ‘Waiting’ the City and Colour song, bleak lyrics again.

And then … The album finishes with ‘Genuine’. This time, the lyrics are of hope “I feel gratitude for the simple words you say / No agenda just honesty / And strength to see a new day … Genuine”. The album doesn’t feel designed as conceptual (the tracks stand nicely on their own), but I’ve quoted the various lyrics above to indicate there’s a story-of-mood to be followed as you listen to Getting There. ‘Genuine’ is a belter of a track to finish on, both in construction and playing: hope in the lyrics, a rising orchestral tone in the arrangement. It would also be a great finisher to a live set.

The website has a series of weekend live shows into the autumn, mostly in the Midlands, one in Bournemouth. Sadly, I’m tied up this weekend, but the Lincoln gig has gone in my diary as one not to miss.

Mike Wistow

Artists’ website: https://steviejones.com/stevie-jones-and-the-wildfires

An oldie. ‘Come In From The Rain’ – official video:

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