Most people know Greg Jamie as the frontman of crushing, rollicking, freewheeling folkpunkers O’Death. In that setting, Jamie frequently plays the cool man, humbly and creepily intoning his songs of doom and dread as the rest of the band bashes and smashes away all around him. However, those who have seen Jamie perform solo know that there’s a heavier than heavy vulnerability and impact in his songwriting and words alone, unadorned. Though it may be the unpopular opinion, I always felt that O’Death smothered Jamie’s songs, covering up the intensely gorgeous little details in his songwriting that make it so special in the first place. Thankfully, Letter Ghost, the latest from Jamie’s stripped-down side project Blood Warrior, captures and preserves a finely crafted set of spartan performances of his work, effectively allowing all those who only know Jamie as the quietly crazed frontman of O’Death to finally hear the secret magic at work in his own private world of minor key cadences and smouldering desperation.
At first, to the uninitiated, opener “Letter” might sound like an alt-J outtake. There’s that same creaky voice, the same attention paid to unusual instrumentation (chord organ, hypnotically arpeggiated nylon-string guitar, odd rhythms), but Jamie’s music is rooted in deeper, darker territory, and he writes from a place that’s archetypally timeless. Also, alt-J is pure garbage, and if this actually sounds like alt-J to anyone, they’ve bought the wrong goddamn record. Jamie’s lyrics are deeply informed by the narrative traditions of folk balladry the world o’er, from Appalachian Americana to old world story-songs and back again, and Blood Warrior’s unusual choices in instrumentation play out like a half-dazed, lucid dreaming love letter to the now bygone New Weird Americana movement of the early 2000s. Oddly equalized piano chords drift in and out of “Letter,” emerging sonically from a century’s worth of songwriting dust to drop themselves into the middle of a ballad equally lovely and devastating. “Oh lord we were naked, oh lord you had wings / When huddled together, we’d hear how you’d sing”, he croons in his fragile, shaky tenor, “The light in the morning reminds me of you / So gentle and present, so achingly true.” This is smartly crafted, headily experimental stuff, but it’s all presented in a format that’s infinitely listenable, and hitched to melodies that are consistently heartbreaking and memorable. There’s one song here that does total and true justice in conveying the emotional wizardry of a Greg Jamie solo performance. Hilariously enough, it’s titled only “Untitled.” Over delicate, clean electric guitar leads, piano and his own lone acoustic guitar, Jamie strings a melody together that feels classic. All hyperbole aside, this genuinely feels like a gem, one of those songs you return to time and time again. It’s so lonely, so desolate, and at the same time so beautiful, a trick Jamie has nearly perfected in his work over the years. On Letter Ghost and elsewhere, he frequently pairs his most tragic, doom-laden lyrics with the most captivating, uplifting arrangements, creating an emotional disconnect that can be sometimes hard to deal with as a listener, in a good way. Even for those unfamiliar with Jamie’s work, “Untitled” may very well bring about tears if listened to in the proper context. His high, delicate voice rings out into the emptiness just beyond his accompaniment, bringing just a bit of sunlight to the proceedings while the band gently strums along. It’s almost like a torch song, played with the ambling grace of an early Nina Simone tune, or even Dinah Washington at her darkest, but it’s something else altogether, scary and arresting at the same time that it feels hopeful. I could try to describe it, but it simply has to be heard to be really understood.
