New to the Anti Records lineup, but no stranger to songwriting, Jade Jackson brings a little bit of California to the folk/country landscape in her debut album Gilded. Jackson grew up in the town of Santa Margarita, where she spent 100-degree summers sweating and songwriting in her parents’ house, free of both Internet and air conditioning. By age 16 she had written upwards of 375 original tunes and received local acclaim for her composing prowess. Now 25, Jackson is mentored by Los Angeles rock n’ roll legend Mike Ness, who nurtured her songwriting through to the album’s fruition.
The result of their collaboration is a fusion of familiar balladry and indelible one-liners. The album starts off slow, taking the form of a “Cold Cold Heart”-style lament, rendering the listener potentially unprepared for the electricity Jackson will unleash later on. The opening track “Aden” is awash with storybook woe: “Oh can’t you see you are tearing me apart? Don’t you know you are breaking my heart?” But continue listening and Gilded will reveal itself as a very different kind of storybook: the memoir of a woman’s heartbreak and recovery, from codependence to independence.
Jackson is incapable of writing frail, surface-skimming love songs. Instead she mines her memory for traces of anything tangible, transforming nostalgia into phrases like, “Time doesn’t whistle or rattle the tracks, and you don’t hear it coming, or see when it passes” (“Back When”). She harnesses the voice of a leading lady, acting out the eight stages of country-western grief, from crying (“Aden”) to drinking (“Good Time Gone”) to wrecking her car (“Salt to Sugar”). And, she does it while rattling off effortlessly powerful lines like “Well, it’s been fun, but my motorcycle only seats one.”
Whether or not Gilded was intended as a folk-rock opera each track stands tall on its own merits. Of particular note are the songs that showcase Jackson’s Los Angeles rockabilly revival flavor: “Troubled End,” “Good Time Gone,” and “Motorcycle.” In “Troubled End” she recounts the tale of a girl misled by her lover, cranking out venom-infused lyrics stacked upon a throbbing oom-pah rhythm reminiscent of Johnny Cash. Then – in true Hank Williams fashion – Jackson sways into an eerie falsetto for the chorus: “But it’s too late to go back now, it’s much too late to turn around.”
Though this album has warranted comparisons to folk songstresses of past eras, Jade Jackson is categorically a product of today. She leads an all-male backing band, with whom she collaborates to create story-songs that empower their female protagonist. Her music is a blend of genres from the wailing country-western of the 1940s to the blues-driven rock n’ roll revival of the 1990s. She emulates the cliched country-western imagery of a bygone time, whether she’s smoking a pack of cigarettes “one by one” or sleeping under the stars with no place to call home. But her protagonist is ultimately modern and authentic, because she is modeled upon Jade herself.
Gilded pays homage to Jackson’s home, her upbringing, and the musical traditions that inspired her. The result is a seamless alliance of the storytelling folk balladeer and the angst-driven outlaw, which harmoniously coexist in the songwriting soul of Jade Jackson. This is a multifaceted debut that brings to life a poetic, soul-searching idealist, dipping her toe into the waters of the world.
