Reviews
Artist:Jack Cade Album: The Death Throes Of A Faded Empire
Label: Collsion
Tracks: 8
Website: http://www.jackcade.com
Adopting the name of the Captain of Kent, who led a revolt against the abuses of the ruling class during the 1400s, having released three albums with the Everyday Sinners, this marks the gruffly-voiced Cade's third solo album, recorded in lockdown on the south coast of England with contributions from band members Ben Cix-Smith on dobro slide and drummer Adam Perry with Hana Maria providing fierce violin.
It opens with 'It Ain't Easy', an organ-backed call for the strength "to peel away the fake from fact and see the reasons for the act…to hear the lies and see the truth" and not follow "blind and stoop" or put yourself before others. The musical moods shifts to classic Cash country for the storysong 'The Amber Lights', a wistful memory of teenage years "kickin' heels and killing time" in "a long forgotten seaside town" and an old friend who "had a plan, to drink the whole world dry… one bottle at a time".
Taken at a steady strum with melancholc violin, the slow waltzing 'The Awakening' opens with reminder that "History is written by the winners/No matter if they are the sinners/The people will cheer and applaud/A past scrubbed clean of all fault" , a harsh instrumental bridge before the lyrics return to the theme of truth and lies, of "laws enacted as chains" and how "Steel is forged in the fire/Wisdom is born in the light".
Taken at a worksong pace with a slow handclap rhythm, the vocals mixed back and echoing, 'Saviours and Sinners', a funereal sea shanty coloured by slide guitar and from whence the album title comes, again focuses on the nation's moral decay ("these well worn spires, I thought so grand/Stand crooked with deceit on this land/And the ground it is dust all beneath my feet/On the road of all I believed") and a call to "set a fire to all that you know" and "start again at the rising of the sun".
'Night Terrors' is again dark and deep, conjuring Rick Rubin's Cash makeover, another slow sway carried by hefty power chords, a song about the cold sweats of being seduced by the darkness and the "daemons …hiding just out of my reach …picking their way through my honesty" and the "fear that I have lost the will to stand and fight". Another slow waltz, 'Some Bruises Don't Fade' strips it back to just his Cash-like dark gospel gravelly voice and guitar as he sings about looking forward and turning things around instead of dwelling on and being chained down by "the words, the choices, the years that are lost".
It builds to an intense finale with the slow bluesy, slide forged trudge 'What Do The People Say' about wilful blindness and just paying lip service ("Dropping pennies in a box for a fund/Think we've done enough/Posting comments and sharing the love") and looking the other way, thankful it's someone else not hem, to a swayalong multi-tracked backing vocal chorus. It ends, then, with another excursion into Cash-land and dobro, closing on an upbeat note with 'Deep Blue Sea', about taking that first step on the long road to new horizons, offering his steadfast support with his own spin on the wind beneath my wings as he sings "If you're that bird flying high and the edge of the skyline/I'll be the deep blue sea beneath your wings" to carry you to a better tomorrow.
"What's the point to wax lyrical and sing/If the words that we say don't mean anything", he asks. But these words are tempered in the fire of commitment and determination, and while the old empire may be in its death throes, Cade offers the glimpse of a genuinely true brave new world.
Mike Davies
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