JENS CARELIUS - The First Songs

If a friend had slyly played me Jens Carelius's "Song #1" without telling me what it was, I would certainly have jumped out of my seat, hypothetically speaking. With no clear clues to dispel the granite-solid idea that would have formed in my head after a scant thirty seconds, I'd have immediately rejoiced at the thought of hearing some unhoped-for unreleased Nick Drake track, one that even boasted far better sound quality than the dismal bootlegs, official or otherwise, that have circulated in recent years. A jump out of the seat at the very least, since in all these years of singer-songwriters or bands promptly likened by critics to the bard of Tanworth-in-Arden, and just as quickly recognized as nowhere near him, I'd never come across anything that sounded so monstrously similar. I don't know how conscious this mimicry is on the singer's part, but hoping it isn't would be naive. The quality is undeniably there, but it's impossible to separate it from such a heavy reference point, especially since at times it comes across as something surgical, mathematical, precise down to the millimetre. Listening to Carelius's "First Songs" with a blank slate, as if Nick Drake had never existed, simply isn't an option, so along with the quality you're forced to swallow the disorientation as part of the same well-wrapped package, one that tends to tip the balance toward the latter.

A disorientation that smacks of sheer audacity. "Song #1", cunningly placed there to open the dance, is of all the tracks on offer the one that siphons off the master the most, with undeniable skill but also without respect, bordering on outright plagiarism of an undefined sort. Plagiarism of a style more than of a simple song, plagiarism that perhaps betrays even less personality beneath the fine form and good execution. These are qualities you'll find in generous doses on this record, along with a decent knack for varying the moods while working from a palette of precious few colours. A fine painting in the end, but produced with the very same technique once used by some famous (and instantly recognizable) painter of the past - Renoir, say, or Henri Rousseau. Not a forgery, but still the work of someone whose own voice, left to its own devices, remains a mystery. It's all Drake: the intimate tone that still knows how to be sprightly, the same guitar patterns, their unfolding in a crisp, brisk rise and fall, the shadings. The acoustic embroidery on the instrumental "Sonja" is beautifully nuanced, just the way Nick liked it. "Summer Skin" strikes you for being melancholy yet never the least bit maudlin, just as Nick managed to be. "Lay Down Your Love" and "The Heat" reek of "Bryter Layter" from the very first notes, shamelessly, as does the lively "Quicker The Run", for that matter. And then there's that voice, damn it. The spitting image, same timbre. It shouldn't even be possible - this Jens plays the impersonator with real success, since every now and then he gives me goosebumps just like the original did. It's a momentary weakness of mine and it doesn't last long: all it takes is running into this "Come Back To Me" to unmask the impostor. Here Drake's vocal style is stretched to an exasperated, dragged-out extreme, tipping into caricature.

Go to hell, Jens Carelius - you're talented, fine, but playing this dirty drives me mad! Learn from that other Jens, the Swedish one, who draws on the past to reinvent it, not to copy and cheapen it the way you do. The one who puts something of himself into it, because he has plenty of himself to offer. Go to hell, Jens Carelius, I could throttle you, yet I keep listening to these songs because every now and then I feel like losing myself in an illusion. The dream that Nick is still here with us, inventing and moving us. Better are those other excursions, where the resemblance becomes a little less embarrassing or gets blended with something else. Better is "Along The Keys", more ethereal, suspended, contemplative, like a summer evening in Norway. Clearly a little more removed from the template, as quiet as some of the early Kings Of Convenience material. Better are the two instalments of "Our Freedom is Now Yours", more mannered perhaps, but following a bent that brings them closer to Tim Buckley. Better is "On Through The Morning" with its fine country-folk breath and a solemnity that tastes more of Yankee epic than of the sad shadows of a quiet English lad. Play your hand more subtly and more freely, without being a slave to something you can never be. If you manage that, under your own name or with Atlanter, your band, I'll root for you with all my heart.

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19/06/2017