Jule Brown

Smoke and Mirrors

(Enabler)

Record Review by Amber Henson

I will preface this review by saying that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a country music fan. In fact, that’s an understatement. I would say that I am a fan of many genres of music, none of which are remotely country. So why am I reviewing Jule Brown?

Well, as it turns out, Smoke and Mirrors isn’t as country as I first thought. After the first few songs, I was worried. It was alright, of course—nothing so twangy as to make me turn it off completely, but I was trying to remember what my interest in this person had been. It’s pretty good background music; there’s nothing too catchy about it. I thought, hey, this would be for someone who does not like country music to get for someone who does, because then, even if they played it around you, you could survive the onslaught.

Somewhere around the cover of “Green River Blues,” which is about halfway through the album, I realized that this more like southern blues. On the cover track, he sounds like Bob Dylan, but the rest of the time he has this sort of appealing hopeless quality to his voice. By the time I hit the last track, “You Can Do It Overnight,” I heard that guitar riff that Jack White was trying to accomplish all through the last White Stripes album. It’s nice to hear it from someone who knows what they’re doing and from someone who means it (I don’t mean any disrespect to Mr. White, but he doesn’t seem to be really committed to that sound). And neither does Jule Brown, for that matter, but there is something real about Smoke and Mirrors—and I suppose that’s what attracted me: the realness, or, dare I say, its heart and soul.