Jackson Howard - Just for the Mystery (2017)

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Written by Lance Wright, posted by blog admin

Jackson Howard’s journey from a St. Louis upbringing to the precipice of global recognition is an ever timely reminder that talent will still win out. The thirteen song second album from Howard, Just for the Mystery, further elaborates on the prodigious skill his debut demonstrated and shows a young artist growing by leaps and bounds in both his confidence and skill level. It, naturally, helps Howard’s development that he’s logged a significant amount of time on the road since his first release and has a full slate of dates across the country scheduled for this year. The frequent interactions with live audiences and the exposure provided by traveling the country and seeing so many various walks of life surely proves to be helpful fodder for his expanding songwriting vision. Just for the Mystery is an across the board winner and avoids the sadly inevitable filler compromising some second efforts.

The album starts off with the title song. “Just for the Mystery” gives newcomers a nice overview of Howard’s talents on a number of fronts and has a tempered amount of ambition for getting this sort of material over with listeners. He obviously elevates the AOR form some with his focus on incisive, sharply written lyrics and nuanced musical landscapes, but he’s obviously steered this song towards achieving mainstream appeal. A gossamer thin sheen of keyboards opens “Run With Me” before it settles into an acoustic setting and some particularly atmospheric vocals from Howard. The lyrics don’t aspire to some sort of pseudo poetic posturing – instead, they are eloquently conversational without ever over-reaching for their effects. His cover of the Led Zeppelin IV classic “The Battle of Evermore” is revelatory in the best possible way. It’s pulled away from its Celtic roots and give a much bluesier feel than what we are accustomed to for this track and almost has a country twang that marks it apart even more. Rachel Horter’s contributions to the track are every bit the equal of Sandy Denny’s on the original Led Zeppelin track and Howard turns in one of his most emotive performances on the release.

Acoustic guitar and piano are the musical focal points of “Surround You” and Howard turns in another yearning vocal full of warmth and melody. “This Town” is another acoustic based track with stronger narrative qualities than many of the other numbers on Just for the Mystery and Howard gets over those storytelling aspects with an attentive and charismatic vocal. Outside a light smattering of keyboards, acoustic guitar steers “You Are More” much of the way and plays off very neatly against Howard’s ever appealing voice. The album concludes with its second cover, one that shows Howard’s comfort with surprising his listeners. “Unbelievable” revisits the early nineties smash for British dance pop rockers EMF to remarkable effect peeling away its electronica elements in favor of a straight forward rocker. It concludes with an exclamation point maintaining the same energy that its sustained from the first. Just for the Mystery is an across the board winner for anyone willing to explore its riches.