Review: Jackie Leven – Elegy for Johnny Cash

The review in Firdaposten (Florø) of 8 October 2005, written in Nynorsk, begins with a career outline: Leven has made music almost continuously since the early seventies, as or with John St. Field, Doll by Doll, Concrete Bulletproof Invisible, Sir Vincent Lone and under his own name, yet has never had the big breakthrough. In the early eighties the record company tried to make him a pop star, but after a studio session for the planned album he was one late night subjected to blind violence and nearly strangled. His ability to speak and sing vanished, he lost the record deal and followed several years of physical and mental problems from drug and alcohol abuse, until he made a “formidable comeback” in 1994 with the EP “Songs from the Argyll Circle” (as printed) – when Leven was seen for the first time as he has stood ever since.

The biggest surprise of this release is the recording location: of all places Beirut, Lebanon. Those who expected an album coloured by its surroundings will be disappointed, and anyone who assumes from the title that it sounds like Johnny Cash is wrong too. It is “not a lament for Cash” but rather a tribute to the producer Rick Rubin and the sound and mood he achieved on Cash's last records. Musically it is, “as usual”, what Leven calls Celtic soul; he has also been called a Scottish Van Morrison.

Again he has written a handful of songs that will last, but this time he has put it all in a more accessible mode – so that he may now “perhaps get the breakthrough he so absolutely deserves”. And he has probably not been so close to the sound of Doll by Doll since they split. Highlights are “Blue Soul Dark Road” and “King of the Barley”. The review sits under the sub-heading “Skotsk avdeling” (“Scottish department”); author and rating cannot be made out on the page.