Album Review: Jamie Webster – Moments


amie Webster Moments artwork




It’s alright being the people’s poet, but how do you know what they want when most of the time they don’t even know it themselves?

Jamie Webster’s meteoric rise, a la Gerry Cinamon, has been a magic carpet ride, transporting him from humble sparky’s job to selling out arenas, all on a ticket of meeting the slings and arrows of 21st century life head on.

It was this philosophy of all-in-it-togetherness which ran through his debut album We Get By like a stick of rock, but his seemingly relentless upward journey was brought to a halt by you know what, as the audience whom connecting with was so important were put under voluntary mass house arrest.

Doubts at this point for any musician were natural – as was the then-26-year-old deciding to meet them head on. The outcome for a man who began writing songs to escape is that Moments is a gift to be heard universally, an album of expanded horizons that leaves him scant hope of turning back.

An unapologetic fan of Bob Dylan, Webster knew the risks that electrifying his music would bring, but was the first to admit that the compulsion to do so gave him little choice.

With Manic Street Preachers’ fourth wheel Dave Eringa as producer, and recording in the historied confines of Rockfield Studios, it’s clear that even in the process greatness felt within touching distance.

Days Unknown acts as the first rallying call; here optimism – ‘Time to say goodbye to the phase of the Netflix days/And scrolling down our phones’ – plays out over anthemic indie made for handclaps and hoarse voices, with the need for good times more urgent as the ‘Tory hounds’ lurk in everyone’s shadows.

If the jolt of the century taught us one thing however, it was in understanding who you are when fingers point. For some of us having empathy was the hardest key to turn, but on Going Out the forgotten and frustrated are left to make their own rules (sound familiar?) without being condemned.



Blockbusting opener Davey Kane, meanwhile, addresses the denuded and intentionally vicious prison system, its downtrodden strings and weary guitar longing for happier endings than this.

Wisely this isn’t politics, but if we don’t know what we want we do at least know what we don’t want; closer What More? eviscerates another mob of unboss like bosses over a wilding boogie that invites a stompin’ much deserved.

But it’s the title-track which throws growing up and growing out together – and in the desultory piano and lyrics about living in the moment our bard rejects the idea of belonging to one tribe or another.

Part of We Get By’s universal appeal was in the simple things; the stories of odds being beaten and simplicity of loving one another. North End Kid reprises this grand opening of the door, half strum, half reel, as a dreamer dreams of being more than sum of his parts, with only hope for company.

There are echoes too: Knock At My Door shakes down Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac but stays in character, while What’s Wrong? picks up the classic Mersey scat and playfully updates it for the Instagram age.

The best of Moments lies in Jamie Webster’s past as much as his future. A man who feels he is answering to destiny, as people’s poet his secret will be out soon enough.

For better or for worse, he’ll be everybody’s then.


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