Three years on from sophomore album, Blood Thinner, the L.A. based Melbourne-born singer Jordie Lane bridges the gap until his third studio outing (he’s also just released Live At The Wheaty to keep patient fans happy) with this five track EP Not Built To Last, which, if you’re not familiar with the name also serves as a useful primer to his sound.
Warmly relaxed, folk-cloaked alt-country with feet planted in the 70s is the mode of choice, his nasal voice evocative of Tweedy, Adams and Parsons with just a hint of Orbison when he goes for the warble.
Produced by Skylar Wilson, Here She Comes gets the ball rolling with jangling electric guitar and a slow shuffling drum pattern, the drawled, slightly narcotic vocal delivery reminiscent of Free Falling-era Petty, its lines about love’s push and pull setting the general lyrical tone. Couched in Wilson’s spooked keyboards and spare rumbling percussion, Dead Of Light is a musically moodier affair that explores mortality, working its way to a closing Daft Punk groove, while, laced with pedal steel, the bittersweet Maybe Someday brings things back to keening Americana territory. Lost In You is (at least until piano and lap steel back a muted appearance) a one man and his guitar love song evocative of vintage Greenwich Village era coffee bar troubadours leaving the disc to close up with a piano tinkled and snare brushed waltzing shuffle cover of fellow Melbourne singer-songwriter Brendan Welch’s Think I Always Thought, Lane’s soaring croon conjuring comparisons with M Ward as he again muses on love, mortality and change.
It may be a while before a full album of new material arrives, but until then this keeps things ticking over very nicely.
Review by: Mike Davies
Download Not Built to Last via: Amazon