All praise, no blame

The latest album by arguably Wales' greatest cultural export is one of his best

GIVEN that there has probably been more written about Tom Jones than any other living Welshman, knowing where to start with a review of his new album is rather like approaching an aircraft carrier. You know it’s big; it’s just that you don’t realise how big it is until you get up close and personal.

Much had been written about Jones’s new album before it had actually been released. If you believe the internet rumour mill, Jones’s record company vice-president was supposedly aghast at hearing the new collection of songs as they were supposedly eleven “hymns” and with no Sexbomb-esque hit within. As Jones’s record was a key release on Island Record’s roster for 2010 with a large marketing campaign to support it, one can perhaps understand a certain level of nervousness among record company management, particularly in its accounts department.

Coming on the back of the thankfully largely-forgotten Mr Jones (the Wycleaf Jean-produced opus from which even Jones fans would be hard pushed to name more than three songs) one can begin to understand that bringing this latest work to market might need a little bit of innovative selling and distributing.

The release of Praise and Blame must surely have been accompanied by a collective intake of breath at Jones’s record company. Relax everyone: not only is Praise and Blame a genuinely lovely and often touching collection of songs, it is a record that has a clear artistic vision and a coherent narrative structure. More, it is a valedictory statement wherein Jones reminds us just why we took him to our hearts in the first place: he is a great singer.

Just read that last sentence again. At one level it might be a classic statement of the bleeding obvious but take some time to reflect on it. Between 1975 and 2005 you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. In place of a great singer producing great art, Jones’s career went stratospheric as his management used his talent to cash in along the Las Vegas casino strips. He stopped being a singer and became a star. Jones went from leather-trousered rocker to housewives choice within the throw of a Vegas croupier’s dice.

It must be a strange life being a living legend. In a society obsessed with people being famous for being famous, Jones could have easily have gone on milking his back catalogue and turning up once every six months on a Friday night chat show to demonstrate his living legend status and be fawned over by simpering hosts with little interest in Jones as artist and only interested in showing dated pictures of Jones in a pair of Speedos or lounging next to a capacious swimming pool – Welsh dragon motif tiled into the bottom, of course.

It’s clear that Jones has taken significant time to reflect on his legacy. He’s just past his 70th birthday so its perhaps inevitable but there is a steely determination to regain control over his artistic vision and remind us just what made him so popular and acclaimed in the first instance.

This neatly brings us to Praise and Blame. Let’s start with what this record isn’t. It isn’t a collection of hymns, although Jones sings these songs with a sincere passion he hasn’t put to record in an age. It’s also not a Jonny Cash record. Yes, this is a record with Jones singing largely live over a guitar track and yes, much of the record deals with reflections on mortality, but you always got the sense with the Cash American recordings that his time was perhaps coming to an end. With Jones, there is a greater sense that he perceives a new beginning.

The records it most clearly brings to mind are Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska or The Ghost of Tom Joad, and Ray La Montagne’s Trouble. The latter is hardly that surprising given the involvement of producer Ethan Johns. Johns has been prolific of date, helping turn Kings of Leon into global superstars but equally having spectacular success with Ryan Adams and the aforementioned La Montagne. He plays a number of instruments here too so the influence is clear and distinct.

Make no mistake, though. This is Jones’s most personal record to date, his most impassioned and, I’d argue, his most successful. Gone is the bombast, the irritating over-singing that blighted his records in the 80s and 90s. Gone as well is the “Dad Dancing” turbo disco drivel. In its place is a thoughtful, mortal performance. Jones has, perhaps, most surprisingly, become a storyteller of note.

The emotional heart of this record comes in a triptych of songs interspersed across the record’s narrative. Did Trouble Me is Jones at his most reflective and open. Here we get a sense of a man who is coming to terms with his own mortality and steeling himself for a Judgement Day he perceives is not far away:

“And of this I’m sure / Of this I know? My Lord will trouble Me / Whatever I do / Wherever I go / My Lord will trouble me”

This is not the cocksure, confident Jones we know and love. In its place is a more rounded, human condition and its all the better for it. Jones’s interpretation of Billy Joe Shaver’s If I give my Soul is his most searingly honest vocal, reflecting on mistakes and seeking redemption.

The closing song on the album – Run On – a composition between Jones and his producer, extends this theme further:

“Working in the dark against your fellow man/Be sure as God made day, or night/ What you do in the dark, will be brought into the light”

Much has been written about the blues influence of this record- perhaps not as much though about the influence of the Deep South that infuses the record. Deep South Wales, that is. “Working in the dark against your fellow man” immediately evokes images of Jones’s childhood mining community and a sense that the man himself is not just recognising but embracing his roots and heritage warmly.

The album artwork contains photographs and images from both America and Wales, the two countries that have shaped Jones’s career and that are at the heart of this record. Jones has used both influences to spectacular effect here.

Praise and Blame is a record to be lived with, to contemplate, to reflect. It’s deeply personal, yet universal. It’s open, yet private. It’s straightforward, but contradictory. It’s about one man but it’s ultimately about us all.