Album Reviews: The Jaded Hearts Club – You’ve Always Been Here and Dagny – Strangers/Lovers
The Jaded Hearts Club – You’ve Always Been Here
★★★★☆
Beatles songs are like passages of religious text: great to reel out for a faithful crowd but you tinker with them at your peril. Such was the dilemma facing The Jaded Hearts Club, the Fabs covers supergroup formed by Muse’s Matt Bellamy (on bass) and industry mover Jamie Davis as an excuse to let off steam playing Hamburg-wild Beatles sets in bars and clubs with a revolving cast of famous friends, including Miles Kane, Graham Coxon and members of Jet, Nine Inch Nails, Muse and The Zutons. One memorable evening, a tipsy Paul McCartney even hopped up for a couple of tunes, making them the band The Beatles could have been.
Come their debut album, however, they've astutely spared the sacred cow. Bookended by Bellamy taking tremulous lead on a gramophone-crackled “We’ll Meet Again” and a claustrophobic “Fever”, they’ve instead turned their powerhouse rock loose upon a connoisseur selection of Sixties pop and northern soul barnstormers. Picture matching crushed velvet blazers swapped for leather jackets and cruises through Detroit in open-top Cadillacs.
Bellamy’s production stirs up a potent brew. Coxon’s unhinged guitar and the hearty rock bellows of Kane and Jet’s Nic Cester are underpinned by the corroded sci-fi fuzz that has made so many Muse records sound like the work of malevolent cyborgs. The record starts on well-trodden ground, with Kane’s spirited rip through Richard Berry’s “Have Love, Will Travel” and the Jeremy Kyle-worthy revelation that the Four Tops’ “Reach Out (I’ll Be There)”, by the sound of The Jaded Hearts Club version, might well have fathered Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl”. Later, “I Put a Spell on You” becomes the helpless puppet of Coxon’s cruel guitar voodoo, and they follow The Beatles as far as a meaty take on Gordy and Bradford’s “Money (That’s What I Want)”.
But the Jaded Hearts’s primary mission is to crate-dig for lost classics ripe for rediscovery as brazen rock yowls. In their hands, Marvin Gaye rarity “This Love Starved Heart of Mine (It’s Killing Me)” gets a new lick of psychedelic paint. The Isley Brothers’ “Nobody but Me” becomes a motoric stampede. Shocking Blue’s “Long and Lonesome Road”, given the full bombastic Muse treatment, sounds like Cester’s satnav has accidentally directed him straight into a supermassive black hole.
Befitting the world’s starriest party band, You’ve Always Been Here is a carefree celebration, a win-win; the band have fun unloading on such un-precious tracks and the songs prove themselves sturdy enough to withstand the punishment. In rock or classic soul circles, it's guaranteed to raise a smile. MB
Dagny – Strangers/Lovers
★★★★☆
In Dagny’s native town of Tromsø, Norway, the sun is obscured from view from November through to January. Perhaps this explains why the artist – full name Dagny Sandvik – is compelled to make such dazzling pop music.
Her debut album, Strangers / Lovers, is a veritable koldtbord of slick, danceable tracks that capture both the euphoria of love and the defiance of heartbreak. On “Somebody”, she’s giddy, soaring across propulsive synth beats to reach an anthemic chorus; the shimmering “Bye Bye Baby” revels in the catharsis of closure. There’s a wonderful Fleetwood Mac bass thrum on “Moment”, while “It’s Only a Heartbreak” – inspired in part by Humphrey Bogart’s famous “Here’s looking at you, kid” line from Casablanca – is a clever twist on the oft-explored theme of unrequited love.
Dagny's debut has arrived a couple of years after the UK's Scandipop frenzy, which might be perfect timing. While it’s been noted that she might (to date) lack the big personality of stars such as Katy Perry (Dagny co-wrote and was sampled on Perry’s 2019 hit “Never Really Over”), her personality – and music – seems more inspired by the quirks and introspectiveness of early Sia. Which is by no means a bad place to be. RO
