Not Your Typical Day Out is the third studio release from singer/songwriter Jiggley Jones since he first debuted in 2012 with an EP entitled No Spring Chicken. He has crafted out a place for himself in the Americana genre as being one of its more original practitioners – obviously well versed in traditional forms, but individual enough to place his own distinctive mark on those forms and resist playing too deeply to formula.
Jiggley Jones has experienced both critical and commercial success – he earned fulsome accolades for his earlier EP’s and has impressed club and festival crowds alike without ever self-consciously tailoring his act to fatten his bottom line. It sounds cliché, but Jiggley Jones makes honest music. There’s nothing pretentious or overwrought about the ten songs on this collection and there’s clearly fierce artistry burning behind it all.
“Danger Island” is a wonderfully offbeat, but musically skilled, opener. I assure you that 2018 won’t bring you an odder refrain coupled with more traditional instruments – the slide guitar, banjo, and gentle amble of the music are startling when a singer lightly croons about cannibals over the top. Naturally, the song isn’t literal and there are hidden meanings here waiting to rewarded diligent listeners. “Wide Awake” and “Del Alma” are two songs out of the album’s ten that are sure to find favor with much, if not all, of Jones’ audience.
They continue pursuing the Americana influences pervading the album as a whole, but there’s a stronger sense of melody and construction informing these songs and Jones turns in even wider, more all-encompassing vocals than we hear with other tracks. Another, albeit edgier musically, highlight of the album comes with the tracks “That Pearl” and, especially, “Warm”. There’s a near psychedelic, hazy vibe surrounding the latter track while the former keep listeners guessing from the first and manipulates the standard vocal for the album and achieves a different feel without ever straining too much.
Jiggley Jones Proves He Ain’t Dead Yet
“Flow” and “Restless”, the album’s eighth and ninth tracks, are successful flirtations with the blues, an area only hinted at with earlier tracks, but the former is the much grittier of the two. “Flow” dispenses with the standard rhythm section attack for such tunes but, remarkably, resists ever becoming too gossamer-like and, instead, slithers past listeners with desperate, plaintive yearning. “Restless” is a more commercially minded interpretation of the form while still working in a surprising number of instrumental turns into the performance mix.
Not Your Typical Day Out ends with the song “Rain” and it underlines the storytelling through the sound side of Jones’ musical vision without ever coming off as unnecessarily stagy. Jones has been ably assisted by a number of harmonies over the course of the album’s ten songs, but he saves his best individual singing performance for this tune and is sure to provoke a reaction from all but the hardest of hearts. This is a wicked good album, his first full length, and whets our appetites for what turns his talent may take from here.
Find more Jiggley Jones on his WEBSITE and on YOUTUBE
-review by Michael Saulman
