Jack Breakfast: Over Big Bridges
Jack Breakfast continues to explore and define the sound and character of his previous two recordings - 1998's Jack Breakfast and 2001's Rock and Roll Album - in Over Big Bridges, his new and best realized album.
Soft, lyrical songs that seem based more in Tin Pan Alley than in rock and roll are Breakfast's stock in trade, played by Breakfast's band (piano based, with a nice drum kit, well-played bass and incidental guitar) which is composed entirely of himself. That the sound is so great, so elegant, forces one to consider the complexity of the musical mind that can write and arrange stuff so far outside of the box.
All of this serves as a base for the vocal and lyrical work which is really the heart of these records. Whether the character is a fiction or a truth, Breakfast's songs are all gentle, slightly drunk odes to love by someone who doubts his ever really getting it, and songs by someone infatuated with teenage life who may well have missed it. All of this is sung in the voice of that character: he sings in soulful whispers and gulps, and uses his voice as an instrument as deftly as he uses all of the others. Its quite a thing.
Over Big Bridges seems to complete the evolution of this whole package: the songs and instrumentation follow very closely on the other records, but the whole thing seems significantly more precise in its arrangement, and the writing has continued to mature. I wonder where there is to go with it from here, but I will remain interested in seeing.
If you'd like to listen and see what the hell I'm talking about, you can go to Jack's website. If you're in Toronto, keep an eye out for irregular gigs.
Or you can read Bad MonkeyX's 2001 interview with Jack Breakfast.
Jack Breakfast: Over Big Bridges. Troubled Cat Records, 2003.
Review by jep clayton, BadMonkeyX. May 2004.