Oliver John-Rodgers (OJR) was born in the wrong era. With his long, dirty blonde hair and fuzzy mustache, he looks like a contemporary of classic southern rockers like Gregg Allman or Ronnie Van Zant. Sartorially speaking, he is groovier than either of these doppelgangers; his outfits run the eclectic rock n’ roll gamut, from denim jackets to blazers, bell-bottom corduroys to skinny jeans. He’s thin and he looks like a guy you would have known in high school. In most pictures, he is wearing a pearly-white cowboy hat in the style of Hank Williams.
Musically, too, he has a sound shaped by the long history of music that is splayed out behind him. He is self-described as the grandson of “two country-music-and-bluegrass fanatics”, and lists Nirvana, the Pixies, and Cracker as some of his earliest influences. On his Soundcloud, you can listen as he covers the Beatles’ “I’m Only Sleeping” and Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold”. Add to this diversity a healthy dose of traveling: he spent some time singing protest songs in New York City; after that, he busked around the greater London area and hitchhiked around Europe. Now he is settled in Nashville, at least temporarily.
OJR exhibits this range of influence on Nashville Demos, his third album, which was released last May. His first two albums, High School and Human Style, were folkier, and tended to be fairly uniform. Nashville Demos, on the other hand, is genre-bending. It is a collection of songs from this nomadic period in his life, and its sounds mix and collide, like a Jackson Pollack painting. Best of all, it was made on GarageBand.
What stands out about OJR is his musicianship, his arrangements, and his inflections. In the first fifteen minutes of the record, you hear psychedelia (“Sad Pony”), country folk-rock (“I Cry”), and garage rock (“Numb”). There’s “Runnin’ From the Law”, with its Spaghetti-Western feel and mariachi horns, and “Fisher of Men”, which sounds like a cross between Neil Young and Paul Simon.The album closes with “Front-Door Man”, a sly nod to the Willie Dixon tune “Back-Door Man”, and a twist on the classic blues concept of the “other man”.
OJR’s delivery is on point. He has that certain drawl you expect from country records, but the distinct nasal sneering of a rock n’ roller. The sweltering sound of “Lips of Fire” is complemented by the drone of his voice, almost a whine, like he is trying to find the energy to sing on a very hot day. On “Missin’ Sweet Paris on a Rainy Day”, he sounds forlorn and reflective, and one can’t help but imagine a hitchhiker, drenched by the unromantic rain, cursing all the truckers who just “laugh and pass”. And this is no studio effect; check out this acoustic performance of “My Generation”, and it is easy to see how much fun he has while playing. (The second verse and the bridge are especially telling.) A good artist is (s)he who can transmit the energy of the creative moment beyond the moment; OJR does this very well.
Musically, too, he has a sound shaped by the long history of music that is splayed out behind him. He is self-described as the grandson of “two country-music-and-bluegrass fanatics”, and lists Nirvana, the Pixies, and Cracker as some of his earliest influences. On his Soundcloud, you can listen as he covers the Beatles’ “I’m Only Sleeping” and Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold”. Add to this diversity a healthy dose of traveling: he spent some time singing protest songs in New York City; after that, he busked around the greater London area and hitchhiked around Europe. Now he is settled in Nashville, at least temporarily.
OJR exhibits this range of influence on Nashville Demos, his third album, which was released last May. His first two albums, High School and Human Style, were folkier, and tended to be fairly uniform. Nashville Demos, on the other hand, is genre-bending. It is a collection of songs from this nomadic period in his life, and its sounds mix and collide, like a Jackson Pollack painting. Best of all, it was made on GarageBand.
What stands out about OJR is his musicianship, his arrangements, and his inflections. In the first fifteen minutes of the record, you hear psychedelia (“Sad Pony”), country folk-rock (“I Cry”), and garage rock (“Numb”). There’s “Runnin’ From the Law”, with its Spaghetti-Western feel and mariachi horns, and “Fisher of Men”, which sounds like a cross between Neil Young and Paul Simon.The album closes with “Front-Door Man”, a sly nod to the Willie Dixon tune “Back-Door Man”, and a twist on the classic blues concept of the “other man”.
OJR’s delivery is on point. He has that certain drawl you expect from country records, but the distinct nasal sneering of a rock n’ roller. The sweltering sound of “Lips of Fire” is complemented by the drone of his voice, almost a whine, like he is trying to find the energy to sing on a very hot day. On “Missin’ Sweet Paris on a Rainy Day”, he sounds forlorn and reflective, and one can’t help but imagine a hitchhiker, drenched by the unromantic rain, cursing all the truckers who just “laugh and pass”. And this is no studio effect; check out this acoustic performance of “My Generation”, and it is easy to see how much fun he has while playing. (The second verse and the bridge are especially telling.) A good artist is (s)he who can transmit the energy of the creative moment beyond the moment; OJR does this very well.
Now for something a little more specific.
Lyrically, OJR can be a hit or a miss. At times, his rhymes feel strained and unpoetic (“I can’t seem to fit all my thoughts into one hundred forty / characters, oh no! / Or some emoji / Do you even know me, man?”). The conversational tone of the lyrics, the lack of metaphor and ingenuity, is their weakness; this is especially apparent on songs like “In Love with a Bowler” and “Sad Pony”.
Then, of course, there are times when OJR hits the mark, and hits it hard; “Numb” and “My Generation”, some of the strongest tracks musically, are also the strongest lyrically. There are still prosaic lines (“My Generation”is quoted above), but what makes them stand out is their respective messages, which resonate with this author. Both songs deal with the separate dissatisfactions of being young; one of feeling out of place and displaced in time, the other of feeling belittled and unheard.
“My Generation” is the anti-Millennial song; stylistically, it sounds like something you’d hear on an Oldies station, and lyrically, it lambasts Millennials for their excessive reliance on technology, and the insincerity of their interactions because of that technology. He wonders about the deception of the selfie and the distillation of the tweet, and accepts, perhaps begrudgingly, that he cannot quite escape their influence; after all, he does have an instagram.
“Numb”, on the other hand, does not reference smartphones, or selfies, or twitter; its message goes beyond 2015. It is a garage-rock refusal of the watered-down sense of place and meaning held by the successful few, a middle finger to the humdrum of the real world.The song rails against the jaded and the complacent, the cynical and the practical, the old and young alike who say things like, “You don’t understand…”, or “There’s nothing you can do about it…”, or “This is reality. When’re you gonna grow up?” The best lines come in the bridge:
“I’m sick of everybody always tellin’ me
How empathy don’t do business any good.
They might as well say, ’Hey, boy, you shouldn’t give your extra bread to the homeless
Outside the Bowery Mission in your own neighborhood!’
And I’m fed up with everybody tellin’ me
I don’t know nothing cuz I’m too young
When all they’ve learned in their 35 years of living
Is to fight the urge to trust anyone!”
It is biting and accusatory, and he has no qualms about calling out the falsities we are simply asked to accept. It is anthemic, a song that does not look for the essence of youth in sex or drugs, but in protest. OJR is railing against it all with a smirk spread wide across his face.
In a recent interview he did with HERO magazine, OJR said that when he gets to the “podium”, so to speak, “[he is] going to say things the way artists used to.” If his Instagram account is any indication of things to come, then perhaps that podium is not too far away; this month he will be opening for Grace Potter as she tours through the Southern U.S. All I can say is that I hope he continues to say what he wants and means to say, in spite of the numb folks who might tell him that he can’t. Somebody has to wake us up.
Lyrically, OJR can be a hit or a miss. At times, his rhymes feel strained and unpoetic (“I can’t seem to fit all my thoughts into one hundred forty / characters, oh no! / Or some emoji / Do you even know me, man?”). The conversational tone of the lyrics, the lack of metaphor and ingenuity, is their weakness; this is especially apparent on songs like “In Love with a Bowler” and “Sad Pony”.
Then, of course, there are times when OJR hits the mark, and hits it hard; “Numb” and “My Generation”, some of the strongest tracks musically, are also the strongest lyrically. There are still prosaic lines (“My Generation”is quoted above), but what makes them stand out is their respective messages, which resonate with this author. Both songs deal with the separate dissatisfactions of being young; one of feeling out of place and displaced in time, the other of feeling belittled and unheard.
“My Generation” is the anti-Millennial song; stylistically, it sounds like something you’d hear on an Oldies station, and lyrically, it lambasts Millennials for their excessive reliance on technology, and the insincerity of their interactions because of that technology. He wonders about the deception of the selfie and the distillation of the tweet, and accepts, perhaps begrudgingly, that he cannot quite escape their influence; after all, he does have an instagram.
“Numb”, on the other hand, does not reference smartphones, or selfies, or twitter; its message goes beyond 2015. It is a garage-rock refusal of the watered-down sense of place and meaning held by the successful few, a middle finger to the humdrum of the real world.The song rails against the jaded and the complacent, the cynical and the practical, the old and young alike who say things like, “You don’t understand…”, or “There’s nothing you can do about it…”, or “This is reality. When’re you gonna grow up?” The best lines come in the bridge:
“I’m sick of everybody always tellin’ me
How empathy don’t do business any good.
They might as well say, ’Hey, boy, you shouldn’t give your extra bread to the homeless
Outside the Bowery Mission in your own neighborhood!’
And I’m fed up with everybody tellin’ me
I don’t know nothing cuz I’m too young
When all they’ve learned in their 35 years of living
Is to fight the urge to trust anyone!”
It is biting and accusatory, and he has no qualms about calling out the falsities we are simply asked to accept. It is anthemic, a song that does not look for the essence of youth in sex or drugs, but in protest. OJR is railing against it all with a smirk spread wide across his face.
In a recent interview he did with HERO magazine, OJR said that when he gets to the “podium”, so to speak, “[he is] going to say things the way artists used to.” If his Instagram account is any indication of things to come, then perhaps that podium is not too far away; this month he will be opening for Grace Potter as she tours through the Southern U.S. All I can say is that I hope he continues to say what he wants and means to say, in spite of the numb folks who might tell him that he can’t. Somebody has to wake us up.