Jack Wilson
Jack Wilson
Fluff & Gravy

Link: Jack Wilson at Fluff & Gravy

There are two songs I really like on Jack Wilson’s self-titled debut.

“The Watchers” is everything as good as any Almond Brothers Band song. It’s fitting for the Seattle-turned-Austin musician who builds that Southern rock base around his twangy voice. Judging from this song alone, you would assume Wilson to be a big Creedence fan.

“Black Hills Fiction” slows things down to a lazy Sunday afternoon crawl. The slide guitar sways in communication with the fiddle that builds off the slight bluegrass nudges to a Texas landscape. It all points to a simpler time with little expectations of timeliness. However, it also shows us a more tumultuous time in the lyrical aspect that it tells through a three-part narrative (told from a native, a prospector, and a soldier), the humanitarian disaster of the Black Hills Gold Rush. The song is set up where it could bounce around to infinity, all tucked away in a meditative state that bodes as much quality and finesse as any historical song sung about the Titanic.

You feel a closer bond to the Texas geography than you do the acoustic folk influence from his Seattle upbringing. And I think there is more charm in that than say a song like “The Truth.”

And “Valhalla” does too much to try to please the listener, showing off its glitz through some horns when all it really needs is Wilson himself. It shows Wilson trying to break free of the limitations that nest him into a certain style, but the effort has to be further extended for a reaction to take place. “Valhalla” just

“Fell Inside” is very much ripped out of the style of Alejandro Escovedo, even down to the song title. It’s everything Escovedo would write with simple desperation of understanding human nature.

Not everything will lure you into Wilson’s world, but there are those moments that will get you.