The premise for Jake Morley’s new album is that, taking his cue from the adage that there isn’t a manual for becoming an adult, he decided to write his own. And so here it is. It’s a pretty daft premise, really: the whole reason there is no ‘manual’ is because everyone’s life experience differs. The major positive is that the concept doesn’t bear too heavily on the songs, though, in that they hang together as being thematically connected, without that connection being laboured or stylised in an overblown way.
‘I’m an explorer of your face…’ he sings at the beginning of ‘The Floods’, marking the start of his adventure. Over the course of the album’s eleven delicately-crafted and subtly performed songs, Morley traces a latticework of life experience laden with emotional trials and tribulations. He conjures soft sadness through picked acoustic guitar and draping strings alone, and his lyrics, heavy with heartache and melancholy, scenes and vignettes drawn from memory steeped in nostalgia.
|
It’s exquisitely realised, and with immense commercial appeal to boot, ‘The Manual’ is an album that deserves to see Jake Morley reach a very wide audience indeed.
Jake Morley Online
|
