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Album reviews Music

Jack Marks – Blues Like These

JACK MARKS plays the Cameron House tonight (Thursday, June 20). Rating: NNNN


I bet Jack Marks often gets asked who wrote the song he just played, because many of his tunes sound like classics, found rather than written. Rest assured he wrote all the material on his third album, Blues Like These, even if some of it (Hammond B3-drenched Maggie’s Hardware Store and Milk Thistle, for example) sounds uncannily like 70s Bob Dylan.

As you can probably ascertain from the title, this isn’t an upbeat record, though Marks seems to laugh a little during Plant Me A Garden – a tongue-twister of a country ditty love song propelled by drumsticks, accordion, guitar and piano. But sad ballads are what he does best this time around: Song For Me (with Raven Shields singing backup) is already a staple of his live sets, Now That We’ve Met strikes on an unfortunate truth about desire finally, beautifully produced, confessional-sounding closer Blues I Have, marks an interesting and moving departure for the Toronto songwriter.

Top track: Blues I Have

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