baptist generals // jackleg devotional to the heart

One of the best folk-rock albums you’ll ever raise a glass to.

 

baptist generals  //  jackleg devotional to the heart

 
Baptist Generals begin their latest album Jackleg Devotional to the Heart with a star bursting cacophony of sound, imagine an aorta rupturing and your close. Machine En Prolepsis is not only a harbinger for the ensuing eleven songs, it is also a green light and it signals the lurching locomotive that this album is, forward and forever on upon rusted, misaligned tracks. The music is smart and painfully honest twangly-soul-folk and it sounds even better with the non-sobriety of late night musings.

The Denton, Texas-based Baptist Generals make the kind of music you want when you graduate from the top 40 folk acts and you’re ready to sink your teeth (and ears) into the raw meat of a damaged, limping, yet hopeful heart. This is pulsing bass lines and a palpitating drum kit, and lopsided ambient spirit noise threading through Chris Flemmons’ spit-grimed and soul fractured voice.

Singer/Songwriter Chris Flemmons describes this release as his “love album”, yet it rings of the unrequited variety rather than the reciprocal arrangement we all seek. Embedded throughout are sporadic rants and woeful sidesteps, instances of what sound like an avalanche of colliding instruments, perhaps a chipped scalpel and bent forceps commingling restlessly with twisted guitar strings choking and gurgling inside a semi-drunken voice-box. 

This is an album of blue painted hurt, it is desperately beautiful. But finally the Jackleg Devotional to the Heart is a shrouded opportunity, it is the mask you wear when you don’t want to pretend that everything is alright. So, buy the ticket for the train is coming round the bend. Peace.
 

 


 
Tracklist:

  • Machine En Prolepsis
  • Dog That Bit You
  • Clitorpus Christi
  • Turnunders and Overpasses
  • Oblivion
  • 3 Bromides
  • Broken Glass
  • Snow on the FM
  • Floating
  • My O My
  • Morning of My Life
  • Oblivion Overture
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