Jarrod Dickenson – Big  Talk

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Angry and tender, deeply personal and socially aware in equal measure, Jarrod Dickenson’s ‘Big Talk’ is an album born of triumph over adversity and a fine reminder that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. 

Five years ago, Jarrod Dickenson seemed to be posed for a big breakthrough with a major label deal and the critically acclaimed release of  Ready The Horses; then, it all went pear-shaped. The deal collapsed, resulting in over a year of legal battles to get back the rights to his music. He then went down with Covid, leaving him with a persistent and long-lasting medical condition. However, rather than throwing in the towel, he regrouped, channelled his anger and frustrations, and came back fighting. The result is ‘Big Talk’, an album that, unlike its predecessor’s slow-burn soul and gospel, crackles with rock n roll urgency and fire, the songs delivered in the first person and unambiguous in their sentiments. 

On the punchy opening cut, Buckle Under Pressure, he directly addresses his fight to reclaim his music as he declares, “You can steal my songs / But you can’t keep me from singing” and that he’s not someone you can just walk over (“I don’t know how it got into your head / But I’m afraid that you’re mistaken / You seem to think that I’m a man / Who can easily be shaken”).

That resolve and his commitment to his chosen life, regardless the hard knocks, also underpin the more country rock (and 12-string) inclined Born To Wander with its allusion to streaming royalties  (“A song ain’t worth a penny / A story ain’t worth a dime / And chances are you’ll starve / For putting in the time / You know the road ain’t always friendly / Man, she’s bound to beat you down / But there ain’t nothing you could say / To make me leave her now”). Compromise isn’t in his vocabulary  (“You know there’s quicker ways to get it / You’d make it hand over fist / If you’d just climb that / corporate ladder”) because “Maybe I’m trying to feed some hunger / Maybe I’m just trying to get it right”). 

That contrasts with the mid-tempo bluesy organ and brass backed Prefer To Lose, which, couched in gambling imagery and busted relationships, flips the coin (“I watched you place your bets on me / You threw your chips down, but while the dice were tumbling / I robbed you blind, and fled the scene”) with a line in self-destructiveness (“If I could fold this hand, and get a brand new set of cards / I wouldn’t be the thief, dear, and you wouldn’t have a broken heart / But just like the gambler can’t help but play the game / Oh, I cannot be a different man from the one I am today”) because “I guess somewhere deep inside I just prefer to lose”.

Joined by Oliver Wood on vocals with JP Ruggieri, a constant on electric guitar, and Jani Rix providing congas and Hammond, Home Again is a musically almost tropical-sounding dash of gospel that slots into the life on the road genre (“Another night, another flight / Another dawning day / All that’s ever close to me / Is a thousand miles away”) that echoes the Paul Simon colours on his last album.

While Big Talk is an album born of personal experience, the perspective isn’t always inward. Case in point is the Waitsian junkyard blues of Bamboozled, a pointed attack on Donald Trump (“a madman with a plastic heart”) and the deceit, greed, and bigotry he represents with its condemnation of the New American Dream (“Well, you can hate another race in the name of our Lord / And you can treat an entire gender like they’re second-class whores /  You could lie and steal and cheat your way to the top /  If you follow my lead / But don’t you bother me with truth, or what’s decent or right / Man, those are silly ideals that only suckers hold tight”) where “You put in an honest day’s work, but only the crooked get paid / Yeah, and everybody sees it, but they just look the other way”.

As such, in the loosely autobiographical Southern swaggery With Any Luck, he sees no option but to refuse to live in a toxic environment (“Man, I’m tired of being pushed around / I’m tired of dealing with these clowns / I’m tired of dealing with these fools / I ain’t in the habit / Of running when the chips are down / But some things ain’t worth sticking out / Some things ain’t worth seeing through”) and that “There ain’t nothing left, but this town to blow / We’ll just keep on driving / There’s something good waiting down that road / With any luck it’ll start to show”.

There are softer musical moments, such as the gently loping pandemic blues If You’re Lookin’, a co-write (their first) with wife Claire (who also provides harmonies on several tracks) where, while “the stages, they’re all empty” and there’s stormy skies above, “There’s beauty if you’re looking” and “You and I were built to last”.

The speak-sing Long Hard Look returns to a bluesy choogle and political commentary as he asks America to look in the mirror at the face staring back (“There was something in his eyes / And that crooked little grin”) and ask, “Are you picking up your brother / Or are you shooting him down”.

Departing from the personal input, the penultimate Don’t Deprive Me is a straightforward, McCartney and Nilsson-influenced old-time jazzy, brushed drums tongue in cheek tale of a man who doesn’t know why the relationship has fallen apart  (“Tell me, dear / If I am way off base here / But you seem a little mad with me / And I, I know I / May not be the sharpest knife / But those bags look mighty packed to me”) though the line “I hear every word you say / But do you have to be so rude” could equally apply to those in power who are more concerned about the tone than the content of their critics. 

Involving violins, viola, cello and upright bass, the arrangement by Ethan Johns, the album ends, set to a WWII backdrop, with the Willie Nelson-coloured waltzing acoustic Goodnight, the story of his grandparents (to whom the album is dedicated) and warm reflective musings of when their love first bloomed (“You lived one block away, but until that day / Your heart had not yet met mine / We watched the moon slowly melt / Into the morning light / And though it was late / That very first date / I was not ready to say goodnight”), of going off to war and returning to raise a family and finally the final scene as “the time has surely come to finally close my eyes” but with love still enduring and “As long as you’re here / I’ll never, my dear, be ready to say goodnight”. Angry and tender, deeply personal and socially aware in equal measure, it’s an album born of triumph over adversity and a fine reminder that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. 

BIG TALK is out February 3rd 2023, on Hooked Records. 

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UK TOUR DATES

March 23 – Brighton, UK – Tickets Here

March 24 – Norwich, UK – Tickets Here

March 25 – London, UK – Tickets Here

March 27 – Shrewsbury, UK – Tickets Here

March 28 – Liverpool, UK –  Tickets Here

March 29 – Newcastle, UK – Tickets Here

March 30 – Glasgow, UK – Tickets Here

March 31 – Belfast, UK – Tickets Here