Jack O' The Clock‘s Leaving California
is a highly-detailed musical adventure that reveals new layers with
repeated listens, from the opening strums of “Jubilation,” which
introduces the record with whimsical folksy fanfare, to the angular
harmonized violin lead on the closing track, “Narrow Gate.” Throughout,
the songs of bandleader Damon Waitkus recall artists such as
David Sylvian, Fairport Convention, and Elliott Smith, while creative
musical arrangements showcase the band’s high-level compositional and
instrumental chops. Upon first listen, Leaving California offers plenty of hooks, but this is music that truly reveals its depth upon the scrutiny of repeated spins.
In the title track, “Leaving California,” the album’s most direct and
emotional song, Waitkus grapples with environmental and cultural themes
that surround his experience in California while also revealing a
personal dimension that informed the album. Waitkus and violinist Emily Packard,
who are married, made the decision to move a few thousand miles away
from the Bay Area to Brattleboro, VT in 2019, thus separating
themselves from the rest of the band with whom they’ve been playing
since 2007. Ultimately, the song “Leaving California” provides a
mission statement for the album amidst lush acoustic guitar and string
arrangements and a supple groove driven by bassist Jason Hoopes and drummer Jordan Glenn.
Elsewhere on Leaving California,
the message is more enigmatic, which is reflected by the music on
tracks such as “The Butcher,” where windy riff-age leads the song’s
verses into a dramatic chorus. The song’s ever-shifting feeling settles
into the jazz-inflected instrumental sections that develop through
refined group interplay. It’s here and on tracks such as “You Let Me
Down” and “Narrow Gate” that reveal Jack O’ The Clock at their most
progressive.
The group initially met as
students at Oakland’s Mills College and since 2013, Hoopes and Glenn
have played in the Fred Frith Trio with their former professor and one
of the original visionaries of British progressive rock. Waitkus
initially conceived the band as an acoustic songwriting group, but a
wide range of influences — from jazz and free improv to folk musics
from around the world — and his own experiences as a contemporary
classical composer helped create what he has referred to as “majestic
junk folk.” Since Jack O’ The Clock’s first record — 2009’s Rare Weather — Jack O’ The Clock has become a tight and formidable ensemble whose music has evolved through a prolific stretch of releases.
Despite their steady release schedule, the songs on Leaving California
have been gestating for about six years of rehearsals and performances
up and down the West Coast, and Waitkus knew the time had come to
document this music before he and Packard left for Vermont. The result
is a set of songs performed at the height of the band’s collective
powers, recorded and mixed by Waitkus from between 2018 and 2020 and
mastered by Myles Boisen. Leaving California is a testament to
Jack O’ The Clock’s patient and committed process and it encourages
listeners to keep coming back for more for quite some time.
Leaving California press release