Blabber’n’Smoke have been long time fans of Karen Jonas, saluting her modern take on classic country sounds but she steps up her game here on her latest album, The Rise And Fall Of American Kitsch. Still surrounded by her regular players (guitarist Tim Bray, Benji Porecki on keys, fiddle by Bobby Hawk, Ahren Buchheister on pedal steel along with bassist Seth Morrissey and drummer Ben Tufts) Jonas delivers an adventurous album which takes a long hard look at consumerism, going back to the advent of shopping mania in the fifties (the kitsch of the title when the post war generation filled their homes with plastic gewgaws). That she does so with several nods to the king of kitsch, Elvis Presley and his neon soaked playground of Las Vegas is nothing less than brilliant.
The album kicks off on a conventional note with a killer country rock song, Rich Man’s Valley. Harking back to Gram Parsons’ like cosmic country, Jonas and the band zip through this with some verve, fiddles battling the electric guitars alongside some rollicking piano. Apparently inspired by The Carter Family’s rise to fame it’s a grand opener but it doesn’t prepare one for the remainder of the album. That honour belongs to the next song, Four Cadillacs, a Doc Pomus like rock rumble which references Presley’s tendency to generosity by supplying new cars to family and friends. Presley looms large again on Mama’s Gone, a bluesy number with soaring horns which sees the protagonist weeping and wailing in a melodramatic manner, railing against his loss while Call Dr. Nick (the nickname of Presley’s personal doctor) is a skeletal banjo driven number which deals with pill popping addiction. Las Vegas, the ultimate icon of American kitsch is dealt with on Shake Bump And Grind Show and Gold In The Sand which Jonas sings in a parody almost of Presley’s mid sixties ballad style.
Casting her net further afield, Jonas alights on Florida, the candy coloured land she sings of in Plastic Pink Flamingos. She gives the song a jaunty, almost jive jug band delivery as she tells a tale of a (presumably blue rinsed) denizen who packs her yard with the said ornaments and then savagely protects them from imagined predators. America’s other tropical paradise; Hawaii also gets a mention on the tropical themed Let’s Go To Hawaii, a song which cleverly zones in on dream holidays sold by zealous agents while also reminding one of some of Presley’s movies (alongside a chance for Jonas to celebrate her love of Jimmy Buffet songs).
While many of the songs are rooted in the consumer boom of the last half of the last century, Jonas brings us band up to date (and presumably on the fall mentioned in the title) on the witty Online Shopping, a grand mix of western swing and doo-wop before she delivers her main message on the spoken word title song. Here she plainly explains the dichotomy of instant consumerism and the detritus it produces, the journey from delivery to trash. She closes the album on its most intimate moment on Buy, a solo performance which wrestles with the anxiety produced by the urge to be self sufficient and the lure of advertisements.
While the album finds Jonas a step removed from her previous more countrified efforts she commands attention throughout on a witty and, more importantly, electrifying album.