Jake Bugg - On My One

The Guardian 60

(Virgin EMI)

Jake Bugg’s third album lends itself to morbid fascination. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – there’s always been something bracingly audacious about the Nottingham native’s swaggering, broad-brushstroke take on the folk and blues traditions of half a century ago. On My One, however, sees Bugg also draw on a more diverse range of genres in a way so crude and conspicuous that it is strangely captivating. Sometimes the resulting tracks are just cringeworthy – such as the astonishingly cack-handed hip-hop of Ain’t No Rhyme. Elsewhere, though, they turn out to be quite endearing, as on Never Wanna Dance’s blue-eyed soul or the jaunty country of Livin’ Up Country. But as that last song title makes very clear, there’s not an awful lot of imagination in evidence here. Some of the lyrics sound slapdash, while Bugg’s major subject – a girlfriend who he has realised he’s just not that into anymore – isn’t exactly heart-rending stuff.

Drowned In Sound 40

In the case of Jake Bugg and the Nottingham troubadour’s third album in four years, it’s practically impossible not to invoke comparison. Take recent single ‘Love, Hope and Misery’ for example. A stirring, melody-laden short story of love and loss, it’s pleasant enough on the ear (so long as Bugg’s admittedly shrill tone doesn’t immediately put you off) because of how ruthlessly the song ticks long-established and expertly-crafted boxes.

In fact, it goes further than that, emerging as a work so astonishingly derivative that trying to pin down precisely what one song Bugg is labouring so hard to emulate here becomes a fevered debate in which the likes of ‘Umbrella’, ‘For Your Eyes Only’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘Unchained Melody’ and ‘I Will Follow You Into The Dark’ all register as valid shouts for shared DNA contenders (and there are even more).

Fair enough if this proved a whimsical isolated incident but On My One is so indebted to the efforts of others that you come to wonder if Bugg deliberately set out to construct the cheekiest concept record of recent times. Upon further examination, such a treatise doesn’t quite hold up. ’I wanted On My One to be different’, he noted when speaking to the NME in March. ‘I feel like people are too scared now to do something different’. Laced with a certain amount of truth, Bugg’s declaration is nonetheless a classic sweeping musical statement, one that looks all the more curious as you make your way through these 33 minutes.

The titular ‘On My One’, itself colloquial slang for ‘on my own’, accounts for the first couple. Bugg is in wistful mood, musing on isolation, poverty and apparent despair in the grand tradition of blues singers in dive bars the world over. Tempting as it might be to question the reality of a 22-year-old arriving at this crossroads in life, Bugg has been burning through his specific candle since 2011 and so you take a line like “Three years on the road, 400 shows, where do I call home?” at face value. Soon after, he questions the absence of a higher power, almost begging for some kind of sign. You’ve heard this ‘man and his guitar’ song a thousand times before, but there’s something here, the promise of a confessional that should finally bring intriguing layers to the surface. And then the next number is an up-tempo Kula Shaker knock-off. Okay then.

On My One is less about discovering the core of one’s being and more about kicking songwriting, instrumentation and production prowess into gear. Save for the presence of Jacknife Lee on three tracks, it’s very much a one-man show. ‘I saw this as the logical next step in my development as a songwriter’, offers Bugg in the press notes. ‘It was a challenge but something I felt I had to do’. Admirable intention, no doubt, but the execution is askew. Bugg has always had one foot in the past and that’s fine, but On My One might as well be an official challenge to The Strypes in the ‘parents record collection’ department – though a mercifully more bearable one.

And so it goes. Try to listen to ‘The Love That We’re Hoping For’ and keep ‘A Horse With No Name’ from your mind. Ditto when it comes to ‘Put Out The Fire’ and Johnny Cash. Same goes for ‘Never Wanna Dance’ and Simply Red (!), ‘Bitter Salt’ and Fleetwood Mac… you get the completely unavoidable point. It’s worth noting that nothing here is outright abject, and that On My One moves along at a well-accomplished clip. Hell, the delicate ‘All That’ is a career highlight, even as it does little to stray from this particular strange script. Alas, three albums down, the prolific Bugg is indeed, as he notes, “just a man” - an oddly unknowable and disappointingly uninteresting one.

Pitchfork 30

As a surly young major label malcontent, Jake Bugg has been put through all the authentic rock rites. Slagging off popstars? Endlessly! Posing with naked dollybirds? Right here! Album with Rick Rubin? 2013’s Shangri La. Gallagher patronage? Mais bien sûr. Which brings us to 2016, where at the ripe old age of 22, Nottingham-born Bugg confessed that his newfound wealth had opened his eyes to the benefits of voting Conservative. “Coming from a working-class background, if you didn’t go left, you’d be resented,” he told NME in March. “But after having a few albums and touring a while, maybe financially it’s better to be right-wing. So you’re stuck in the middle.”

If he's not quite moving to the Isle of Man yet, his political ambivalence still isn’t particularly surprising. Despite Bugg’s much-toted council estate background, his skifflin’ songs have always hidden a ruthlessly individualist streak: a sorry-not-sorry attitude about escaping his past (while exploiting its downtrodden character for poverty tourism ballads and cred) and sneery dismissals of his less ambitious friends. “When you’re the kingpin, people wanna take you down,” he sang on Shangri La, in what he unconvincingly claimed was a song inspired by The Wire. As Bugg’s first record without the help of cowriters or much of a producer (Jacknife Lee worked on three songs), his third album On My One is the test of whether he can indeed stand alone and swim without his authenticity armbands.

Uninspired as Bugg’s previous records could be, they were at least coherent: 2012’s Jake Bugg coasted on dusky pre-Beatles bonhomie, while Shangri La had a rockier sting in its tail. The prevailing impression left by On My One is of a young man desperately grasping in the dark for his musical identity, and coming up with one of the most arrestingly baffling collections of music in recent memory. Lead single “Gimme the Love” is a swaggering slab of maxed-out radio dynamics in debt to Kasabian and Second Coming-era Stone Roses, written at the label’s insistence that Bugg give them a single. He makes his feelings on the matter evident in a tirade of jibbered lyrics about airplay, fakery, and the “middle road well bode the game played.” He recently explained that his people had reservations about the bombastic track. “People would say to me, ‘How’s that gonna sound on the radio next to Little Mix?’ That was the wrong question. It should be, ‘How are Little Mix gonna sound next to this?’” (Like sweet, sweet relief.)

Bugg has not been blessed with a natural singing voice (just hear him honk “LAYDEH!” on “Hold on You”) though on doleful acoustic numbers like “All That,” he finds a low husk that suits him well enough. It transpires that one of the benefits of having external producers and songwriters may have been their rather more judicious understanding of this limited vocal range. “Love, Hope and Misery” elicits the kind of “bless him for trying” pity of The X Factor’s audition week: a lovely, dramatic torch song whose poise is shattered by Bugg crooning like a stuck sheep. The words “I'm just a maaaaaaan” have rarely been sung in a less convincing fashion; the chorus does not grow any less painful after a dozen listens. It’s like watching the Titanic hit the iceberg again and again.

“Ain’t No Rhyme” is equally embarrassing. It’s here that Bugg deals with his political uncertainty in a Beastie Boys-inspired rap. It’s his “Straight Outta Clifton” moment, a visit to his old stomping ground that manages to be utterly graceless about his money-grabbing friends, and sound like a government PSA warning young people about the perils of prison. “C’mon Kurtis/Just put down the knife,” he urges. “I knew from his eyes he wasn’t gonna think twice/Put your mask on before committing crime/These kids need to think about time inside/Cos a dagger through the heart comes at a price.” It is miraculous that he doesn’t start the song with the words, “I’m MC Bugg and I’m here to say.”

The diversity of On My One shows that Bugg certainly isn't short of musical inspiration. There are country ballads, like the title track (“I'm just a paw boy from Notting-hum”), while “Bitter Salt” is “Keep the Faith”-era Bon Jovi. “Livin’ Up Country” and “All That” evoke Ryan Adams circa Heartbreaker (or, less favorably, Britpop also-rans Cast). He’s trying, and his time with Rick Rubin has made him into a decent producer. But the lyrics expose Bugg as a young man with nothing to say about society, masculinity, love—anything other than his arrogant, dull disgruntlement at being “three years on the road, 400 shows... no place to go.” His love songs are muddled and mean, one verse accepting blame for a relationship’s downfall, the next telling a girl, “it's all your fault because I won’t do what I’m told.”

On My One is Nottingham slang for “on my own,” subtly illustrating how isolated Bugg seems to feel from his upbringing, and from the major label system that’s got him this far. An album this terrible is certainly the product of some bad decisions by people who don’t have his best interests at heart. To the outside world, it shouldn’t matter that Bugg is a bit manufactured, or that he had help writing his early material. But there’s a difference between being capital-A authentic and being convincing. All the effort he put into diligently slagging off pop music in order to shore up his own indie credentials (even One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson called him on it) has backfired massively. On My One is precisely the kind of mistake that pop stars make when they think they’re smarter than the system.