Jesse Sykes and The Sweet Hereafter
Reckless Burning
BurnBurnBurn Records

by William Michael Smith

You picked me up, dried me off
You were hopelessly devoted
To my darkest hour
I knew I broke every rule
Just so I'd be close to you
I was just your passenger
Hoping you wouldn't see the sign
"Funeral Parking Only"
-- Jesse Sykes, "Love Me Someday"

Visual, arty, quiet, and sonically atmospheric, Reckless Burning is a twang-noir dream of an album stuffed with unfathomable psychological complexities and spiritually irritating complications so typical of our depression-lurks-around-every-corner lives. Seattle's Jesse Sykes delivers her meaty, emotionally loaded songs with a trance-like languid simplicity. The opening title track, almost seven minutes long, takes us straight to the depths of the dream-vision.

Pretty thing, I've got you
Right where I used to be
We ride across this city
Starting fires recklessly

Her band, led by former Whiskeytowner and North Carolina transplant Phil Wandscher, plays like a car carefully negotiating patches of dense Northwestern fog as the sparse, spacy melodies are nursed along in "less is more" fashion. And like a foggy drive on a curving mountain road, there is plenty of melodic tension but never a sense of rushing. The picking is unhurried and precise as notes are held and sustained rather than thrown out in torrents. The somber minimalist noir atmospherics are everything in this moody, thought-provoking music.

Lyrically, Sykes is reminiscent of off-center writers like Trailer Bride's artiste-eccentric Melissa Swingle. Sykes has a husky, reflective, melancholy vocal delivery, but the lyrics present often skewed yet utterly realistic visions, perhaps none more so than the suggestive lyric of the dramatic and slightly deranged tale of "Doralee." The combination of Bruce Wirth's deliberate, plunky banjo and Wandscher's languorous twangs only heightens the drama.

Doralee, there's water in the basement
Saturday you'll be sleeping in the trees
Gone are the weeds that you tended like children
Gone are the days in the distance between

Now a couple, Wandscher and Sykes seem to have conceived much of this music from the emotional residue of previous relationships that went wrong and the period of their personal emotional reconstruction. Hence there is abundant resignation and tentative uncertainty in these songs, indicative of that spiritual hollowness after relationships go bad. Sykes' metaphorical imagery in "Lonely Still" is perfect.

This is where my ship has run aground
Stuck in the mud on the Puget Sound
I came from the Great Lakes and I watched them turn dry
The sky turned black and I cried

But there are also some gentle love songs that exhibit balmy warmth and fragile hope. "Don't Let Me Go" has a delightful country-pop melody and is the most linear and easily understood track on the album. Wandscher's guitar work is understated and elegant.

Keep me, don't let me go
When I'm losin' my head
If the angels won't have me
Meet me at the barroom instead

While the music never rushes, that doesn't mean it's all lazy and simply constructed. Both the title track and "Drinking With Strangers" are complex musical pieces. With its layers of choir-like backing vocals, brief orchestral fills (played by violinist Anne Marie Ruljancic), and Wandscher's mysterious guitar, "Drinking With Strangers" features the most complicated melody on the album.

Drinking with strangers for the last time
And you fell asleep with smoke in your eyes
Hot flashes burning the dust on the blinds
Gin soaked and lonely, you're fuel for this fire

Reckless Burning is listening music, not something for the next dance-a-thon. Like Trailer Bride's High Seas, the album takes alt.country in an adventurous direction that is anything but mainstream. While those looking for "the usual" may not appreciate the band's independent-minded move toward the artistic, atmospheric end of the twang spectrum or their rather non-frenetic approach to playing, serious listeners will find a lot to ponder in this sensual, moody set. This isn't a record that comes to a listener easily. In fact, just the opposite, the listener will have to go to it. Or at least meet it half way with an open mind.

* If there is a rule I've found useful in making a musical selection, it's that you can't go wrong with bands that have opened for those Seattle rock heroes, Supersuckers. Reckless Burning is available through www.burnburnburn.com or Miles of Music (www.milesofmusic.com). More on The Sweet Hereafter at www.jessesykes.com.



Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
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