After having forged his name with fire and groove over the last decade with his main band, the North American Durand Jones requests a time out from his collective work to give free rein, without containment dams, to his particular solo career with “Wait Til I Get Over” (Dead Oceans, 23), his debut in the singular and a beautiful songbook with southern reflections and romanticism conjugated in the present perfect.
Far from feeling barren or underdone, his renewed work formula not only moves us as much as in his previous journeys, but also serves as an excellent letter of introduction to learn more about the melancholic and passionate gaze of this Louisiana artist. And it is that, not content with having become one of the main references of contemporary soul in recent years, Jones now decides to pursue the complex task of integrating, in the most organic way possible, all the styles belonging to root music, in an irresistible whole.
The disco flashes of his most recent work with The Indications (“Private Space”), fade to raw tones scented with magnolia and the Mississippi Delta, providing us with everything from history lessons to the founding and origin of his native Hillaryville (“The Place You’d Most Want To Live…”) to overwhelming reflections on the racial reality of our days, which recall between the rapped lines the most recent victims of police brutality (“Someday We’ll All Be Free”). However, in addition to highlighting his roots in such a brilliant way, Jones knows that he is coming to play alone and therefore he will not miss the opportunity to expose his vulnerabilities in the most frank and open way, as we see him. make in “That Feeling”, where he tells us the warm story of his first love, or in “Letter To My 17 Year Old Self”, where he reminds us of the hormonal downpours of those days (“I’m trying to understand this thing / Oh, this thing called life”), pertinently seasoned with punctual passages of experimental and disruptive jazz.
From the first chord, we will be clear that the beauty that Jones is able to congregate in his songs is from another world and that “Wait Til I Get Over” It is not, by any means, a more common debut. His ability to make our hair stand on end with a gospel a cappella blow says it (“Wait Til I Get Over”), his narrative capable of sweetening our hearts with fragments of passion and rejection (“Gerri Marie”), and his indomitable and enduring competence to create hits with the potential of a good-roller radio formula (“Lord Have Mercy”). A familiar and recognizable sound, but at the same time unique and non-transferable, with which the singer gives us the opportunity to listen to him like never before through twelve songs of a biographical and heartfelt nature that will enliven our most intimate evenings.