Look whose back! Yep, it's Southern California roots-rock bastion Jackslacks submitting his annual record for release, the brand spanking new 3-song extended-play entitled "Invisible" (Shield of Love/Universal SOL-8). Each new track possesses a unique personality, flair, and signature groove, combining rock-solid songwriting, atypical lyrical content and superlative musicianship, all shaped by well-crafted melodies and distinctive harmonies, and packed to the hilt with good old fashioned, no-holds-barred American music.
The innovative original music on "Invisible" features a talented group of players, which include both new and old partnerships, each tied cohesively together in love and melodic harmony as part of the extended Jackslacks family. As customary, Jackslacks secures lead vocals, drums and percussion while Seattle-based guitarist Johnny Mercury, San Diego jazzies - pianist Anthony Stevens, guitarist Eric Hutchinson, and bassist Dave Votel, along with collaborating country picker Chris Cote, plus ex-band mates Bill Giorgio (harmonica) and vocalists Billy Bacon and Bill Grubbs, all contribute mightily. Recorded by Mike Kamoo at Earthling Studios and produced by Jackslacks.
Lyrically, this new music is a throwback to the 'concept' albums, most popular in the late 1960's and early 1970's, of songs composed in a specific order, outside of a particular musical anthology, to emphasize a continuous theme and story line.
Here, we find our leading poetic personality as particularly deep in thought, a seasoned, experienced man contemplating his own mortality. He wanders through life, and genuinely, searches for a way to beat the inevitable, corporal demise. A primeval recollection occurs as he ponders a longstanding wisdom: perhaps 'a bargain with God'. Alas, it is too late even for that and unable to side step fate and its transience consequences, the man instead freezes - with hopes of awakening in a different time and place, in a contemporary land where common disease and human tragedy is resolved. Subsequently, he does. Yet, after initial euphoric corollary suggests he may actually belong in this strange new world, he ultimately struggles in an attempt at reinvention and turns more and more disenchanted, he's much older now, finally becoming ostracized and for all practical purposes, invisible.