"Rare Birds": Jonathan Wilson's new album

Although all of Wilson’s records have been long, this surely explains Rare Birds’ heft (13 tracks, almost 79 minutes), density and ambitiously maximalist style: you need a lot of record if you’re “quoting from earlier versions of [yourself]” and building on a tale that began with your first four-track, when you were 13. This storifying means that despite exploring ’60s psychedelic rock and pop (Pink Floyd and The Beatles, principally), employing synths and drum machines to appropriate ’80s English art-pop production (Peter Gabriel, Talk Talk) and more besides, Wilson hasn’t totally forsaken the retro, West Coast country-folk/rock sound that defined his first two albums....

But if there’s a unifying aesthetic on this LP – which is a set of reflections on a failed relationship and the author’s place in the universe – it’s the brooding, widescreen facet of Pink Floyd as defined by Roger Waters. Inevitable, perhaps, given that Wilson spent months in the studio with him when he was also recording Rare Birds.....

The songs are autobiographical, but not always straightforwardly so. They range from memories of wild, random encounter sand loved-up car rides, soaked in the lore of LA’s geography–Sunset Boulevard, Mulholland Drive, Topanga Creek – to the existentially gnomic. ... Skepticism and a little scathing observation may figure, but ironic witnessing does not. He may be a hipster by association, but at heart Wilson is 100 per cent hippy.

Ιf Rare Birds’ cosmically inclined lyricism only suggests as much, then a guest spot from Laraaji, who chants and plays zither on the beatific “Loving You”, underlines it. But this summary of his guileless intent makes it explicit: “Under no circumstance would I premeditate a sound, or consciously move away from myself or my older material,” Wilson says. “I waited patiently for genuine inspiration on each song you hear. This record I made only with one purpose –to distil what I love about music, songwriting, dancing, sharing, living and loving into one work.”

*Parts from Uncut's (April 2018) review