Album Review: Lane Hall by JRDN & Lane Hall
Fronting the Halifax soul collective Lane Hall, JRDN sings love, family, and a city by the ocean over a working band’s warm production, and the songs about kin and place are the best ones here.
Few things come to mind when imagining a warm, low-slung soul band from Halifax, a port on Canada’s east coast, not known for fishing boats and fog banks, let alone soul music born in Memphis or Philadelphia. Hill is, though, a tight-working trio that trades live bass and drums, tight and fluid in a room versus individual sounds getting laid on top. JRDN is the Nova Scotia singer flush with a decade of touring for clean, radio-friendly, solo R&B before he even named a band for his Live work. That snags him some weight. His voice stays open-throated and in front, while the bass keeps things warm and nice.
That floor is the bulk of the happiness on “Hooked On,” where the pocket is both sturdy and deep, and JRDN is head-bobbing when he leans on a conceit he seems to be unable to shake, love as a drug of choice he can‘t shake, inquiring whether there‘s “rehab for two” and volunteering to “sign myself in.” He delivers it straight (no smirk, no irony), and the band keeps the groove narrow enough that the joke never overwhelms. “Pink Wagyu” is even lower and thicker, and JRDN pendulates between a guy comparing a woman to “the light of my mind and the focus of my Earth” and another about getting his feet planted to make his moves, and he runs out of options by the harmonized smoke-out chorus.
At the midpoint, JRDN does something the love songs don‘t. On “Top of the Charts,” he throws all the tired tropes of a hit single at his four-year-old daughter, Aaliyah. “You are a hit to me,” he sings, then, softer, “And that‘s why it took me so long to have you in my life.” There is genuine lightness here, but also genuine emotion. But the song fails to demonstrate a single action or minute, everyday moment that Aaliyah is experiencing in a scene or a room; it remains at the level of sentiment, the loving father telling his daughter he loves her in only the most unpretentious language he knows.
When JRDN shifts to romantic harm, he‘s probably more generous than the genre: “Holding” is a guy talking himself out of a therapy he‘s not sure comforts him, his mom‘s voice intruding “Baby boy, she better treat you right” and a body that won‘t let him just pretend he‘s feeling nothing (“You really sunk your teeth into me/Got the bite marks to prove it”). It closes with a resolution, not a mope: “I got to be brave and let you go.” “Both Ways” is more balanced about who‘s at fault, a convo where he confesses he lied and so did she, and they‘re stuck in the proverbial “cycle of toxic shit,” as the outro leaves no doubt. “Let Her Go” gives its next verse to Kayo, who reimagines their dynamic as a struggle between “purgatory, paradise,” and the girl he‘s trying to choose; the song falters only when it adds a spoken vignette about “torture” and whether pain is “scientific,” art-speak the song didn‘t require.
Money problems must suck JRDN into his most gritty pocket on “Hard Times.” Uses this bottom gravity to describe a bad month, rent‘s due, paychecks already spent, rising prices, and people sleeping out in the cold. The track “Little Things” is nothing but little things, and I love you, a hand across your body in the dark, a mug of coffee to chase the dawn away, a plate of food when you‘re broken with sound. It is sung fit and close, no high notes, and the sort of ‘thank you’ you whisper into someone‘s ear. He saves the best writing for “Flowers.” A story-song about a chap who worked “Papa’s farm since the day he could stand,” and passed flowers the whole life through for somebody else‘s use, and got nothing back. JRDN keeps the voice to the bare minimum and holds down the story until the end, where the man‘s dead and they‘re turning up late with the bouquet: “I wish he got his flowers in his day/But there‘ll always be flowers laid on his grave.: Far and away the most heart-wrenching, and importantly, the most giving, a life spent cultivating flowers for someone who, it seems, arrives late with the bouquet at the funeral.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Holding,” “Flowers,” “Down Home”