Jackie Leven «Gothic Road» (Cooking Vinyl/Tuba)

The review in Varden (Skien) is headed “Historiefortelleren” (“The storyteller”). The “folk-rocker” Jackie Leven has his good moments, where storytelling and music merge into a higher unity, but is not equally exciting throughout. The critic, Helge Ottesen, notes that this time Ralph McTell (“remember ‘Streets of London’?”) sings on a song and David Wrench helped with the production and in return got an extra track of his own.

Much is catchy, both arrangement and melodies. Leven borrows here and there and makes it his own – for instance the line “The world is a matador and I’m full of bull. I ache in the places I used to ache” (the last part being Leonard Cohen’s) and “Black Is the Colour”, where the song says “heart” instead of “hair”. As good songs Ottesen names “John Paul Getty’s Silver Cadillac”, “Song for Bass Guitar and Death”, “Absolutely Joan Crawford (With a Bit of Tilda Swinton on the Side)” and “In a Shivering Blaze”.