Henry Jamison - The Wilds

The Guardian 80

(Akira)

There are so many songs about drinking. There are probably nearly as many about giving up. But there aren’t all that many songs about one modern situation: your lover’s new-found sobriety, and where that leaves you. A drinker? Supportive? In denial? Or, as Henry Jamison, an insightful Vermont singer-songwriter, puts it elliptically on a song called Dallas Love Field: “Black as the kettle’s the hypocrite pot/ Often than more, more often than not.”

Jamison is a prematurely bearded, bespectacled twentysomething who is just one EP old. His debut album, The Wilds, is that rare thing: an unshowy, literate gem that sounds a little like a lot of people – Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Leonard Cohen – but carves out a niche all its own. The Jacket multiplies Cohen by Stevens, finding passion refracted in everyday things – the air con of the grocery aisle, the light coming off flatscreen TVs. The Wilds are both the wilds of New England and the darkness inside. His songs take place in baseball fields and in the abstract expressionist rooms of museums.