“I don’t really consider this an album per se,” Jamie Shelly says of his new release Least Worst Choices. And while it isn’t necessarily a conventional long player, Shelly still manages to rope each individual track into something cohesive.
The 18-track collection was written and recorded over a fifteen-year period, and the general feel of each piece varies greatly from song to song.
Each song on Jamie Shelly’s new album Least Worst Choices will take you a new journey. This record never stays in one place for long.
Throughout the album’s one-hour and twenty-three minutes, Shelly manoeuvres through folk, blues, pop, and rock to deliver a body of work that never quite sits in one place for longer than a single song’s duration.
The singer-songwriter’s warm, earthy voice navigates different scenes, appearing under different guises in places you wouldn’t expect.
Album opener, Cherrybubblegumcity, is a dreamy and woozy slice of indie-folk that fades in and out of existence without ever really grounding in one spot.
On the raw and crunching Sadie, Shelly struts through gritty, blistering, blues riffs and haunting backing vocals to deliver a track that’ll crawl under your skin and stay there for weeks.
By the time the album’s slow-burning and epic closing track You and Me reaches its conclusion, you’ll be left knowing that you’ve been on quite a journey.
While the album can often feel like a strange melting pot of conflicting ideas, it’s in this unusual dynamic that the album’s strengths lie.
Do yourself a favour and listen to the new album above.
