Album Review: Jamestown Revival Is Found In San Isabel

Jamestown Revival goes to the HEART of country music. I recently saw a film that described country songs as “three chords and the truth.” In their newest record, San Isabel, Zach Chance and Jonathan Clay, are confronting the truth about how dreams and relationships clash. 

Sometimes, wanting more for yourself and wanting your partner/home are two desires that do not match. So often in country music, there is a pit of angst. Beneath peachy guitar and piano melodies, lies a hardened seed of denied truths. Sometimes, you have to leave home to get your dreams, or you have to break your lover’s heart to find your own. Of course, we wish that was not true, but Jamestown Revival uses song such as, “Killing You, Killing Me,” “California Dreamin,” and “Crazy World (Judgement Day),” like epiphanies. These are the tracks made by human beings acknowledging that if life is a journey, you are going to have several destinations and not everyone you love can travel with you. 

It is crazy to realize that you have hurt people, perhaps, as much as others have hurt you. “Mayday Man,” “Who Hung The Moon,” and “Winter’s Lament” use strings and keys to move music like a slow-motion duel, which exemplifies what it is to tell the truth to yourself. It can feel like you have been divided into two persons, delusion and honesty, and they are taking ten steps away from each so as to draw a gun and shoot the other down. This album, by far, has Jamestown Revival elaborating and lavishing their sound so as to languish a sense of beauty and melodrama to their style, of which Zach and Jonathan, easily, do vocally.

Every time I hear Zach and Jonathan ebb and flow as leads and in harmonies, I think of how colors blend to make new colors. It is as if they have made their emotions into various colors such as, red (anger), yellow (hope), blue (sadness), grey (confusion), and pink (love).  Throughout, each song they become and combine these colors to back each other, their messages, and their overall sound; making San Isabel a sonic place to breathe and heal. For More Information on Jamestown Revival and to buy San Isabel On April 19 Click Here.