Jason & The Scorchers HALCYON TIMES (JCPL) Release Date: 22 February 2010

Imagine roots, rock and country all in one package - it’s here! Jason & The Scorchers’s shows revolutionised the way people thought of rock ‘n’ roll and country music. This was 1982, a time when playing a country song wearing a Mohawk or shaved head could land the performer in the hospital. No one ever came away from a   Scorchers show without having a strong opinion about it. People either wanted to feed them or fight them, and both extremes happened regularly. There was something radically holy about what they did, maintaining teh integrity of country while attacking the music with a energy equal to the wildest punk rock bands. R.E.M. became huge fans and the bands toured together. People as disparate a Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols, Bill Wyman of The Stones, or Bill Golden from The Oak Ridge Boys came to their shows. In 1983 the band released its landmark record FERVOR, a six-song EP that “rewrote the history of rock ‘n’ roll in the South” (Jimmy Guterman in Rolling Stone). The record earned them EP Of The Year in The Village Voice and The New York Times. Folks began to take those crazed hillbillies seriously.

HALCYON TIMES is the band’s first album of all new material since 1996, and it’s a hoot! The album is a creative leap forward, showing the band at its peak, not on some sort of self-absorbed nostalgia trip. ‘Moonshine Guy’ opens the record, and is bursting with bravery and bravado, driven by a character who “yells and he roars/like The Stones, hates the Doors.” ‘Mona Lee’ is as exciing as anything the band has ever recorded - it’s hard to pick a standout track on the record - they are all that strong! Hodge’s guitar work has never been better, full of style and inspired originality, while Ringenberg rocks like he is still 18, leaping off the edge of the world, laughing while doing doing it. Snibb and Collins supply that elusive, magic rock ‘n’ roll groovwe, full of energy but grounded in confident, unhurried power. Brad Jones, no stranger to the studio, says of Snib, “Pontus might be the best rock ‘n’ roll drummer I have ever worked with.”

However, like all classic rock records, HALCYON TIMES has more than enough moments of sublime grace to balance out the hormones. Listen to the 12-string on ‘Land Of The Free’ which is like stepping into a Steinbeck novel. Or put on headphones and let ‘Mother Of Greed’ take you down a road that winds from North Wales in 1910 to Birmingham, Alabama in 2009, the protagonists careening from one set of “arms of need” into another. It’s that kind of song, literary without prentensions. In terms of production, it’s hard to imagine a better team than Hodges and Brad Jones. They succeeded in amking a JATS record that captures the live energy of the band, with enough ear candy to keep one coming back for repeated doses. Our first review of 2010 and waddya know, a potential album of the year already! ESSENTIAL.

4.5/5