Now the Jackson, Mississippi project is back with Just Peachy, a brand new EP which picks up where the previous one let off. Almost literally in fact, with opening track ‘Halfway Standing – Reprise’ a continuation of the final track on Stalled Out. A short and sweet slice of country rock complete with pedal steel which finds its narrator at a moment of tortured indecision. A person unsure whether to go back or move on, the titular image evoking that suspension between two states and the internal conflict which results.

After ‘Perch Creek’ with its woozy organ and classic country wistfulness, ‘Head in the Sand’ shakes things up with something more dark and brooding. The track retains the romance of its predecessor but coats it in a newfound attitude and edge, confronting a deterioration of communication within a relationship and thus, inevitably, the relationship itself. There’s a sense of invention too, the sound prone to shifts in mood, something with carries through into the equally atmospheric ‘Don’t Tell Me’. Another example of Rose Haven Motor Hotel’s ability to present conflicted emotions so succinctly.

But it is closer ‘Just Fine, Thanks’ that encapsulates the release as a whole. An apparent return to something more laid-back and easy-going, though the languid rhythms bely the emotional landscape upon which the track, and inside the entire EP, is built. “I’m doing just fine,” the chorus insists, though scratch the surface and you’ll soon see through the claim. The embodiment of a release which digs into the gap between outward appearance and the actual truth. Things might appear just peachy, but hasn’t life always got too much going on for that to be true?

Just Peachy is out now and available from the Rose Haven Motor Hotel Bandcamp page.

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As the title suggests, ‘Blue Moon’ occupies the classic end of the country spectrum too, a song of slow consideration which plays like the calm night between changing days, while ‘Take It Home’ sits closer to acts like Sinai Vessel with its indie influences. But it is ‘Switchblade’ which is perhaps the standout. A worthy addition to the current alt-country revival, fitting somewhere into that post-Drive By Truckers movement of Wednesday and MJ Lenderman. “Waking up in the middle of the road / six-thirty in the morning, little blood on your nose,” Atkinson sings in the opening lines, “65mph in a school zone / you said you didn’t mind, as long as you didn’t know.” A clear introduction to the track’s dicey bravado, where only desperate confidence stands between the narrator and the walls caving in.

You say I switched up
well if that’s true
you can call me switchblade
I don’t have to call you

Things Don’t Stay is out now and available from the Rose Haven Motor Hotel Bandcamp page.

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Sing, Unburied, Sing served as my introduction to Jesmyn Ward, and it quickly became apparent what all the fuss is about. The novel is crafted from distinctive prose that’s at once poetic and blunt, a voice that’s able to capture not just the struggles that exist within families but throughout contemporary America. It pulls off the tricky task of using an intimate study of single family to explore huge themes across several hundred years of history.

Ward is also an expert in creating a sense of place, conjuring the sights and sounds and smells of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. Some of these evocations are good and rich with a sense of nostalgia, like “the smell of onions and garlic, bell pepper, and celery cooked in butter [that] clouds the air” in the kitchen. But others are not good, a reminder of the harsh realities these characters have to live in. Perhaps the best example of this is the opening scene which depicts the slaughter of a goat, described by the young narrator:

“The smell overwhelms like a faceful of pig shit. It smells like foragers, dead and rotting out in the thick woods, when the only sign of them is the stink and the buzzards rising and settling and circling. It stinks like possums or armadillos smashed half flat on the road, rotting in asphalt and heat. But worse. This smell is worse; it’s the smell of death, the rot coming from something just alive, something hot with blood and life.”

The story centres on Jojo, a thirteen year old boy who’s trying to accelerate his journey into manhood to care for his young sister, and his mother Leonie, who’s locked in eternal struggle with herself, the people around her, and her drug habit. Add to that Pop, Leonie’s stoic father, who is (almost literally) haunted by the tragedy and violence of his youth, and Mam, her mother, who is bedridden with an excruciatingly painful terminal illness. A difficult situation is made worse when the children’s father is released from the prison, and Leonie drags them on a road trip across the state to retrieve him.

The sheer weight of the effects of racism on these characters is crushing, the entirely ordinary and believable people portrayed more like the doomed figures from some ancient epic. On the surface Leonie has few redeeming features, a young woman who shows little love to her children, and who takes every opportunity to take out her anger on them. But, by the end of the story, the reasons for this become clear, and it’s hard to blame her for any of her shortcomings. From personal pain of the sudden death of her brother and the abrupt and uneasy transition into motherhood, to the exhausting daily quest for even a scrap of basic dignity and the momentary relief of drugs, its clear that she is a person, one of many, who is battling against a system that has been designed to keep her in chains.

But, of course, Jojo’s anger at his mother is understandable. He is one of the bravest protagonists of recent times, a boy who is forced to steal food from gas stations and secretly feed it to his famished baby sister, who endures the savage treatment of a suspicious cop, and who is covered in vomit more times than anyone deserves. Through conversations with his grandfather he begins to grasp the the horror and brutality of their cultural history, a revelation that leads to a major plot point near the end of the book, a strand that plays out something like Lincoln in the Bardo meets Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad.

Sing, Unburied, Sing is a tale of hardship and pain that’s stitched with a silvery thread of magic, but perhaps little hope. As Ward says in a Q&A with The Guardian, “Young people have a right to optimism, and rightly so; human beings have grown and developed and accomplished wonderful feats in the world. But what mires me in pessimism is the fact that so much of life is pain and sorrow and willful ignorance and violence, and pushing back against that tide takes so much effort, so much steady fight. It’s tiring.”

It’s out now on Bloomsbury (UK) and Scribner / Simon and Schuster (US).

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Take opening track ‘goth kids by the carousel in the mall’ as an example. The majority of the track is morose droning organ sounds, joined infrequently by disembodied voices. It brings to mind the emotive experimental ambient music of people like our pal Benjamin Shaw. The songs are infused with a very 21st Century sense of woe, like on the second track that sounds part funeral dirge, part slow-mo Nintendo soundtrack, with the informative title ‘everyone is playing Pokémon Go and i’m out of data’.

‘Makeshift Parties’ introduces the album’s first proper vocals, with Leah Rials and DeeDee Peffercorn joining Hope to deliver the single repeated line. Again the atmosphere is downbeat, but in a pretty, crystalline way, like driving alone through a cold clear city night, passing neon-lit gas stations and tall and lonely office blocks. The next track is as quietly nostalgic (again, in a sad way) as you’d expect from a song called ‘playing Spyro or Jersey Devil on PS1 w my brother’, while ‘this could be us but you playin’ is a change of pace, introducing acoustic guitar and vocals for a classic bedroom pop sound.

Closing proceedings is ‘dysphoria in the costume store’, an instrumental track that’s rich with a grand melancholy, pretty much the perfect ending to this sad and atmospheric collection of songs.

You can get artless on cassette via Z Tapes or as a digital download from the if i die in mississippi Bandcamp page.

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