Album Review: Jake Bugg
by Bill DeVille
August 12, 2013
Jake Bugg, 19-year-old artist from Nottingham, England, created an album that is instantly likeable. Not bad for his first try at it! It makes you wonder how this young man got so good so quickly. Does he have a cool mother and father who turned him onto the right music at a ridiculously young age? No, it wasn't his folks. He mentioned in a recent in-studio session with Barb Abney that his uncle bought him that first guitar at age 12. Bugg's journey began, oddly enough, via The Simpsons TV show, where he heard the Don McLean song "Vincent" about the same time that his first guitar came his way. He mastered that song, and others, on his own without learning to read music or without even taking a guitar lesson. Maybe he was just meant to be a musician.
In this "flavor of the moment" world, Bugg's music wouldn't sound out of place in any decade since the 50's! The arrangements are spare — generally just guitar, bass and drums. You can hear artists like Bob Dylan in his music, especially on the track "Lightning Bolt," where he delivers lines like, "Sirens of an ambulance comes howling/Right through the centre of town and/No one blinks an eye/And I look up to the sky in the path of a lighting bolt" with the raw, rapid-fire, world-weary delivery Dylan used on "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" or "Subterranean Homesick Blues."
Bugg has actually been dubbed the "East Midlands Dylan," though he says, "Bob Dylan's cool, you know, he's great, but he's not a major influence." Be that as it may, this guy is really good, and that's good enough for me. He's not trying to change the world, he's just trying to write some good songs. Also, his songs don't pack the political punch of Dylan in 1964 or '65.
My favorite song on the album is "Trouble Town," which sounds like it could have been recorded in the American South in 1969, not by an English 19-year-old. On the ballad "Note to Self," Bugg's vocal reminds me of Buddy Holly, whose short career had a similar fast trajectory. You wonder how this guy could have come so far so fast.
It was only 2 years ago that Bugg was chosen by the BBC to appear on its "Introducing" stage at the Glastonbury Festival, and his "Country Song" from the album has already been used in an English beer commercial. Bugg has supported Noel Gallagher and the Stone Roses and recently even opened for The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park in London this summer. He's already at work on album number #2 with famed producer Rick Rubin and he still isn't old enough to buy a drink in this country.
This guy is a breath of fresh air in this world full of manufactured pop music and television singing competitions, and he's often armed only with little more than a guitar and a song. Pick up the Jake Bugg album; you won't be disappointed.