The House That Jack Built - Jack Butters (tici taci)

 

Title: The House That Jack Built

Artist: Jack Butters

Label: tici taci

Cat Number: TICI TACI 069

Genre: Monument Valley Musings

1: Still Got The Feeling

2: Chicken Wah Wah

3: Searching For You

4: Full Panic Mode

5: Wild West Show

6: Diddley Bo

7: Stake To The Heart

8: Drowning In Acid

9: The House That Jack Built

Jack Butters starts his album off with the kind of vocal track which feels like it was made for the Marlboro Man to sing. ‘Still Got The Feeling’ is a clarion call to those who can’t be arsed, but should be. ‘Searching For You’ elicits similar panoramas, inasmuch as one feels very much home on the range, and ‘Wild West Show’ just confirms what one has suspected since the start, which is this is music made for minds eye big skies and prairies, albeit with a synthetic twist. The whole record bounces along on its own propulsive coccyx and is compellingly danceable right from the get go. ‘Diddley Bo’ is an obvious homage to the great man, with acid lines framing and embellishing spectral riffs culminating in a hoodoo hoedown. And it’s a combination of these two motifs that permeate the record from start to finish, appropriately culminating on the title track, which thankfully throws some piano from the golden age of rave in to top it all off. On the one hand, visceral and functional, on the other, wrapped up in a longing to be somewhere across the Atlantic rounding up cattle, chewing tobacco, farting around the campfire and having random shoot outs.