John Wesley Harding – The Confessions of St. Ace

What can one reasonably expect from a swashbuckling British expatriate neo-folkie who borrows his stage name from a Dylan record, covers the esteemed work of everyone from Madonna to Nic Jones and, in fact, predicted the late 20th-century reformation of the Fab Four long before technology and unbridled capitalism brought The Beatles Anthology to a record store near you? The obvious answer is: damn near anything.

John Wesley Harding’s latest effort is, in many ways, an older, wiser sibling to his acclaimed 1989 debut Here Comes The Groom. However, The Confessions Of St. Ace, which dabbles in everything from power-pop to country-folk, is both more ambitious in scope and more fully realized.

“Humble Bee” opens the affair with a piano riff that owes props to Sgt. Pepper’s “A Day In The Life”, and an infectious chorus. Unabashed and well-executed Beatles influences abound on the first three cuts, and as such, find Harding at his vocal best, both tonally strong and forward in the mix. Adventurous instrumentation (possible mellotron alert!) further enhances these lovely pop gems.

Guest vocalist Jimmie Dale Gilmore spices up the crunchy, power-pop guitar hooks of St. Ace’s middle third with his appearance on the darkly psychedelic “Bad Dream Baby”, while Steve Earle joins Harding in a countrified singer-songwriter moment by supporting “Our Lady Of The Highways” with a vocal and mandolin cameo. Both pairings come off quite well, in spite of, or perhaps because of, their unlikely nature.

But the real standout is the album’s lone square peg, the Memphis-inspired gospel-pop number “I’m Wrong About Everything”, which could be a top-five smash in more enlightened times. Should Harding’s version not end up making the charts, forward-thinking artists everywhere are hereby advised to get in line to cover this one.

Picking the greatest single line off any Harding album is a near impossibility. However, under duress, I’ll go with the finale from the amusingly unrepentant “Old Girlfriends”, which declares the following: “Some crap we do not deserve/but most of it we earn.” Don’t be surprised if you see that on a bumper sticker someday.