The Jayhawks: Paging Mr Proust album review - Americana veterans find the sweet spot

My dictionary defines the sweet spot as “the area on a bat, club or racket at which it makes most effective contact with the ball”.

We could extend it to when the elements of a track (melody, lyric, voice, instruments, rhythm, production, mood) combine in a multimodal synthesis where everything is right.

Quiet Corners and Empty Spaces, the first track on the excellent new Jayhawks album – their first in five years – fits the bill.

From the strummed acoustic on the intro and Gary Louris’s high lonesome voice, we are taken on one of those magical journeys that have dotted this Minneapolis band’s 30-year Americana career: melodies, guitars and harmonies to swoon to.

Although there are one or two prosaic efforts, notably Ace, this ninth studio album delivers other gems, such as Lovers of the Sun and The Devil in Her Eyes.

Sweet spots all.

[ jayhawksofficial.com ]