The Jayhawks :: Sound Of Lies (Reissue)

129669-aWhen I wrote about the Jayhawks’ Sound of Lies six and a half (?!) years ago, the album was ten years old, out of print and the band had sailed into what seemed to be their sunset. Gary Louris and Mark Olson had toured as a duo doing Jayhawks songs, but there was no reason necessarily to believe that the band proper was still kicking. Now, in 2014, we have seen reissues of three of the first four Jayhawks albums, a reunited Louris-and-Olson-led Jayhawks record a new album, 2011’s Mockingbird Time, and this week, the last three Jayhawks albums from their original run – Sound of Lies, Smile and Rainy Day Music – get their remastered and reissued due.

It’s kind of fun to think of yet again re-visiting a record I consider the Jayhawks’ finest musical moment. Sound of Lies is their most creative and dynamic album, even if it was the first without Olson. The termination of two relationships right around one another – Louris’ creative one with Olson and his romantic one with his then wife – clearly led to some powerful emotional entanglements. And it still stands as one of the brightest musical moments of the 90s alt-country movement, a record that I come back to far and again more than any other Jayhawks moment except, maybe, “Nevada, California.”

Before talking about the reissue itself, I should finish old business from that first review and say that I was wrong about “Bottomless Cup.” I’m not sure why I thought that the song “seems almost out of place amongst the desolate symbolism of the rest of the album.” Now it seems like the perfect penultimate track – a man reminiscing on an earlier version of himself, a wanted reboot to an earlier vision and ideal of himself that existed before all the late unpleasantness. In the middle of a pretty dark record, it’s a bit of light, a smidgen of that great hope inside of us that somewhere we were perfect and we just have to get back there, boats against the current.

The remastering on this record is something that will probably come down to real audiophiles to suss out. Sound of Lies has always sounded pretty immaculately recorded to me and it’s often a struggle to fully understand why albums that are from the (relative) golden age of digital recording ever really need this kind of treatment. But the end results are as sparkling as they ever were.

As for the bonus tracks, there are five here and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. “I Hear You Cry,” originally on the European version of the album, is a true rarity in the Jayhawks catalogue – a song penned solely by bassist Marc Perlman. It’s a pretty good tune, though it’s clear why it didn’t end up on the album proper. It’s a sultry, dark take on the Jayhawks sound as filtered through their soul influences and with its lyrics based on looking out as opposed to inward, it doesn’t fit Sound of Lies‘ overall lyrical tone. “Sleepyhead,” originally a b-side for the “Big Star” single, is a gorgeous, dreamy song that is a great add for the bonus tracks. Again, not something that belonged on the album, but a great rescue for this particular reissue. There is also an alternate version of album track “It’s Up To You” with vastly different lyrics than what would end up on the final version and also lacking the harmony vocals. Same for the rough mix of the title track included here. Minus the harmonies, this is the song at its most bare bones and while neither of these songs will become the new standard version of either, they are interesting for the insight into the writing and recording process.

The only dud here is “Kirby’s Tune,” a rambling instrumental with electric key flourishes. It reminds me of a conversation I had with Gary Louris once where he talked about liking both Neu! and Gary Numan, hearing small bits of those tastes flitter in and out of the song. But for a band that isn’t known for its instrumentals (or for that matter, doing instrumentals at all), it’s a throwaway of a bonus track, a filler.

Sound of Lies is an important album in the Jayhawks’ catalogue because of the clear demarcation it makes in the band’s history. Louris’ songs had been coming more and more into prominence – compare not a single solo writing credit on their self-titled debut to co-writing status with Olson on every single song (except for the Grand Funk cover) on Tomorrow the Green Grass. The trio of albums released by this version of the Jayhawks would each be their own interesting piece of an evolving work, but Sound of Lies is the band coalescing around an idea that they were far from done yet and driving that point home with its finest hour. words / j neas

The Jayhawks :: The Man Who Loved Life
The Jayhawks :: Haywire

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5 thoughts on “The Jayhawks :: Sound Of Lies (Reissue)

  1. I used to see them at the Uptown Bar in Mpls in the Hollywood Town Hall days. Their FIRST first album, sometimes called Bunkhouse, is also great–but it’s more honky-tonk than their later albums. (Check out Falling Star, Six Pack on the Dashboard, and Tried and True Love.)

  2. It’s absolutely my favorite one of theirs, and an album I return to often. Happy you came around on Bottomless Cup, because I’m a huge Tim O’Reagan fan – his solo album is gorgeous. Thank you for writing about SOL – it kinda got lost in a record company shuffle, so I hope lots more people will be introduced to this little moody masterpiece.

  3. Bottomless Cup to me, IS a desolate song. I feel that way because I was suffering at the time, having made a lot of bad choices. For me it is a reminiscing of how supportive my wife had been thru all the trials & tribulations I caused her; she was my “bottomless cup”, never wavering in her acceptance of me as a flawed man. “I think I let you (her) down” and I was realizing it was “getting late” in the game. And even though “you (she) never gave up on me”, would she stay if she learned “they turned me” into yet another demon altogether. If she left me, the “bottomless cup runs out”. Luckily that was in the late-90’s, and I was able to get past my demons and am still with my “bottomless cup”. I cry every time I hear that song. 🙂 <3

  4. Nice! Hope you will also review the two other remastered reissues here. Smile and Rainy Day Music are great albums from one of our finest bands, a group that simultaneously sounds like everything and nothing I’ve heard before. It’s classic stuff, songs that make me proud to be alive.

    The bonus tracks (including Kirby) are interesting to me in that they provide an open window into the Jayhawks’ writing and recording process. Beyond the value added aspect, that seems to be part of most reissue efforts.

    From a band with this many tastes, both shared and disparate, inclusion of those tracks on the reissue sheds as much light as did their exclusion from the original statement. It’s a generous, brave move on the part of any band, as the recording process is so often about hiding the man behind the curtain.

    And here, those bonus tracks remind me of seeing Frank Gehry’s abandoned models or all the permutations of Picasso’s painting The Crying Woman. Sometimes the artist’s first thought is the best thought; sometimes they make the same work or write the same song over and over, to fundamentally different effects. “Tailspin” from the Rainy Day Music reissue exemplifies this aspect of process, and fans of the original and glorious folk-rock version will be surprised to hear it began (or was attempted) as a much darker blues.

    Also: kudos to you for reconsidering Tim O’Regan’s excellent “Bottomless Cup” — a rare and generous gesture from any cultural critic. Well-done. That song is another example of what makes the Jayhawks great, and unique — another voice, another songwriter appears right before the end of the record, it’s brilliant, and it happens to be that of the drummer (who happens to be a killer singer/songwriter, as are both the bassist AND the other guitar player.)

    The musical cocktail of these five players is why I love bands in general. Each Jayhawk is so gifted, each does he or she does so well and makes it look easy. At the heart of it is Gary Louris: such a fascinating, one-of-a-kind songwriter that it’s almost easy to forget he has one of the greatest rock voices of this era … and by the time one clocks that act, he’s ripping unique and melodic leads that stand alongside any other in the pantheon of classic rock guitarists.

    Looking forward to seeing them on tour. These records are special, and the Jayhawks are truly an American treasure.

  5. Thanks for an excellent, heartfelt review. I could never realize wording as accurately as this comment by previous poster Rick Thomas…”one of our finest bands, a group that simultaneously sounds like everything and nothing I’ve heard before. It’s classic stuff, songs that make me proud to be alive.” Exactly.

    During a long, dark stretch in my life, this band’s songcraft and depth of talent escaped notice until recently. Quite joyously, I’m finding it a strain to take a break to listen to all my other loved music.

    Smiling heart, liberating tears, and those elusive spinal chills only a handful of songs in a lifetime can elicit. These are The Jayhawks.

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