Spencer P. Jones            'Fugitive Songs feat. the Escape Committee'

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Those newspaper features where a bunch of yuppie dilettantes and coat-tugging journalistic whores pick a list of so-called National Living Treasures shit me to tears. Besides the fact most of the spineless turds they nominate have been living off nepotistic arts grants for longer than anyone can remember (something a rock and roller would never do - at least since they drastically tightened access to unemployment benefits), they never mention Spencer P. Jones.

Maybe it's because he's a Kiwi or he's burned up more lives than the Stones have roadies, but while Spencer's making albums as consistently great as this he deserves more substantial public kudos (or you could at least buy him a beer next time you see him at a show.) The guy might take the stage more fried than a barrel-full of The Colonel's original recipe at some shows, but he makes mighty music with an edge that's rare these days.

This is bluesy rock with the smell of cordite not far away. It doesn't bust down any barriers - Spencer's too old a dog to deviate a great deal from the trail he's been forging for a great many years - but so what? "Fugitive Songs" is as fine an effort as anything else in his backpages. Surprisingly, it's the first full album with his longtime band The Escape Committee, who have a degree of warmth and empathy for the songs that most outfits couldn't match. Helen Cattanach (bass) and Andy Moore (drums) lay it down, thick and rich, for Spencer and Phil Gionfriddo to weave guitars over the top.

The band leader slips into the grizzled vocalist role so well (except on "She's Not Kidding 'Round" where Gionfriddo gets to sing) with that tone of resigned worldweariness that's earned, not learned. I caught a few of these songs in a solo set SPJ did in Sydney on the night of GW McLellan's death in May 2006. If "Death Trip USA" seemed a sombre choice for the setlist, it positively drips with dread in its recorded form with some withering guitar. "Thanks" seemed like an improvisation that night as Spence name-checked a list of indulgences, like a crooked pharmacist reading out an illicit shopping list. Apparently not, and this version at least matches and maybe even edges out the one on the new Beasts of Bourbon album for irony and/or self-deprecation.

It's the grind and clang of "Hot + Cold" that'll be most familiar to punters who've caught this combo live. There's some clever tracking with the quietly upbeat "Blow Out the Candles", the open-chord chime and harmonies of "Road Trip" and the breezy cover of John Mayall's "Top of the World" punctuating what might have otherwise been a darker album.

Classy stuff, again. Truly your loss if you don't hook in. -

The Barman

 

Mess and Noise

Drawing down from a swampy blues-rock tradition, pioneered in this country by the likes of the Scientists, Fugitive Songs oozes familiarity rather than originality, Spencer P. Jones’ weathered voice hinting at the miles of highway traveled in a career spanning over 20 years, while current band, The Escape Committee don’t waste a note. ‘When I’m No Longer Poor’ proves the highlight, evoking Dylan in delivery and story, the climax of the chorus summing up the feel of the record: the fugitive in these songs hasn’t run afoul of the law or a woman but flees from time itself. The inevitability of this failed attempt to escape gives the record a sense of fate and finality that is all consuming – ‘I’m Onto You’ reinforces this theme with its knowing wink at the forces that come to drag you down. While the entire album can be boiled down to the blues, Spencer P. Jones and the Escape Committee manage to vary tempo and feel enough to keep the listener between the speakers through the 12 tales on offer.

by Toby Dundas

 

Beat Magazine - Melbourne

Observing Spencer P Jones exploit his musical talents is like exploring an Egyptian tomb with a seasoned archaeologist. Listen to anything Spencer has decided in his infinite wisdom to commit to live or recorded form, and you’re caught in a catacomb of bruising riffs and grinding grooves, forever stumbling upon yet more undiscovered rooms lined with enough rock ’n’ roll gold to fund the entire nation’s superannuation for the next hundred years. You assume sooner or latter it will be all dried up, and the booty exploited – but you’ll be wrong every time.

Fugitive Songs is Spencer’s latest record, and his first with his current backing band, the Escape Committee. And – surprise, surfuckingprise – it’s more of the solid gold excellence Spencer can’t help but bestow on us all. From the moment the driving blues of Hot And Cold kicks into action, you know things are going to be good. With a riff so simple a three-year-old could learn it, yet so brilliant only a seasoned explorer could find it, this is something special to behold. When Spencer wanders onto the front porch to indulge his affection for sweet and dry country rock in When I’m No Longer Poor and Blow Out The Candles, the result is almost enough to bring a tear to the eye of the most emotionally introverted punter. In Death Trip USA, Spencer leads us through melancholic territory that’d be a recipe for a fried brain if it weren’t for the leadership of the man in the Stetson hat – and you only need wait a couple of songs before the mood morphs into the glassy-eyed optimism of Road Trip.

Yet for all of that, there’s a triumvirate of songs that sum up this album, and just why Spencer P Jones is a legend. The first is the cover of John Mayall’s Top Of The World, a soundtrack to the indescribable and intangible pleasures of being in love. In Spencer’s hands the guttural blues aspect is rendered brutal and ball-tearing. The second, Wise Up To Me, is the flip-side – in his distinctive barren monotone, Spencer gracefully acknowledges his failings, yet still pleads for love and understanding, a beacon of sincerity and contrition in a sea of emotional hypocrisy. And finally, there’s Thanks, Spencer’s countrified ode to everything good, bad and ugly in his rock ’n’ roll life. This is a man who looks at a half drunk glass of beer and sees only the happiness that the first half has given, and the pleasures the remaining will provide.

Thank God for Spencer P Jones.

PATRICK EMERY

 

THE AGE - Melbourne

Best known as a sideman, Spencer P. Jones is finally taking centre-stage, writes Andrew Stafford.

SPENCER P. JONES is remembering an old friend: "I remember there was one point there where I was playing in Hell to Pay and things started getting messy. I remember Ian saying, 'This is enough of this, we've got to stop doing it' - and he screwed up the syringe in his hand, you know, the needle sticking into his hand - 'F--- this shit, we've got to stop doing this!' "

Jones' new album, Fugitive Songs, is dedicated to Ian Rilen. It's a recording worthy of the late champion of the Melbourne rock scene and further evidence of something that has been apparent to anyone paying attention for years: Jones is, at 50, in the form of his life. There's no one making better rock'n'roll records in the country.

Better known as a sideman than a prolific writer in a resume that includes the Johnnys, the Beasts of Bourbon, Hell to Pay and a half-dozen others, Jones, a self-confessed late bloomer, has been cast as a journeyman - not to mention a hell-raiser - for most of his career.

However, since the release of his second solo album The Last Gasp in 2000, Jones has mined a golden vein of form. The Lost Anxiety Tapes, Fait Accompli and last year's odds and sods collection Immolation and Ameliorations 1995-2005 were all evidence of a man well in touch with his muse.

What changed? "I did the work," Jones replies simply. "Songs don't appear, you have to sit down and work them out, you know?"

It was an ethic Jones picked up while playing guitar in Paul Kelly's band throughout the late 1990s. "I learnt a lot from watching how he went about his craft. That's all I picked up from him - you've got to do the work."

It was a period of reflection for Jones. His first solo album, Rumour of Death, something of a lost classic, had appeared in 1994. It bombed. The same fate befell what then seemed the final Beasts of Bourbon album, Gone. "I was just trying to decide what I wanted to do. I think that was maybe my midlife crisis. I just figured, 'Well, you know, I might as well just do my own thing, be my own guy'."

Now he's never been more visible. As well as Fugitive Songs (made with his band of four years, the Escape Committee), Jones has helped steer the recording of the first studio album by the Beasts in a decade, Little Animals. He's just back from the South by South West festival in Austin, Texas and completed a small mountain of press for his more famous band.

The Beasts, more than anyone, have benefited from Jones' creative explosion. "We were trying to impress ourselves, I think, and we did that, no problem at all," he says. "I thought Gone was great - we did some good work there - but everyone was dismissive of that record because Kim (Salmon) wasn't on it, you know. I had a listen to it the other day and I thought, 'No, I'm right, this is a good record!' And I think - I know - we've made a better one now."

He's unconcerned about his own album being overshadowed by the Beasts. "Not at all, I reckon I'll probably pick up some sales. I probably sell more copies of the Beasts of Bourbon's material anyway, so I'm quite happy to give them my songs."

One of those songs, Thanks, made it as the final track on both albums. It's a song that pokes fun at Jones' legendary reputation: "Thanks for the acid, and the ecstasy. And the methamphetamines - woo-ee!"

"I'd be dead if it was all true, you know what I mean?" Jones chuckles. "I might drink a whole lot of vodka on the weekend, but the thing is I go back home, I've got my kid on Monday and Tuesday, I've had plenty of rest It's not like I'm out in Melbourne, you know, going to the pub, burning cars, raising hell."

I ask him about Rilen's death. "It hurt a lot," he says. "But, you know, he was someone who did go to the pub every day."