By Todd Lavoie
THE BALKY MULE
The Length Of The Rail
(Fat Cat)
Stubborn? Who’s stubborn? Don’t be thrown by the Balky Mule name — Sam Jones might have selected his pseudonym in honor of an unyielding beast of burden, but his newest release is quite an amiable fellow, actually. The formerly Bristol, England-based musician (known for his stints in Flying Saucer Attack, The Third Eye Foundation, Movietone, and Crescent) relocated to Melbourne, Australia and focused on crafting wobbly-footed D.I.Y. pop and alluring folk/electronica collisions. In spite of a resume flush with hazy spin-drifts of guitar feedback and creeping atmosphere, Jones’ Balky Mule project is a considerably more playful affair; The Length Of The Rail is a bubbling, bleeping romp of toy-shop psychedelia and likable shy-boy vocals. On this sophomore release — though best of luck to you in finding its predecessor, as it appears to have been a limited-run and self-issued — the English ex-pat clearly seems to be having a grand ol’ time, picking up every instrument in sight and banging upon every available surface in pursuit of finding the right combination of curious ping-pings and plunkety-plunks.
Still, the disc is very much a bedroom creation, and one can almost imagine Jones skipping and grinning from behind the safety of his teetering piles of instruments; behind that wall is a bashful, boyish warble, pitched somewhere between Robert Wyatt and a more lucid version of Syd Barrett. It’s a thin, sweet, incredibly vulnerable tenor — perhaps not always perfectly-pitched, but channeled wisely for tremendous emotional impact. Set against sputtering electronics and delicate guitar textures, Jones’ innocent rambles trigger both the sad sighs of nostalgia and the cheerier heart-flutters of childhood memories.