Album: Jon-Rae Fletcher / Oh, Maria

Artist: Jon-Rae Fletcher

Album: Oh, Maria

Speaking about his hands, this may well be Jon-Rae's first album where his reach doesn't exceed his grasp. But that might indicate that the former has receded more than the latter has expanded.

To put that another way: in the past, the definitive versions of his songs always seemed to come on stage, but here the recorded versions seem to be the equal of the live presentations I've seen — but this time round, the songs might not be as good. A casual song cycle of love and murder, Oh, Maria has the feel of an author shifting from autobiography to genre fiction.¹ Or, at least, we can hope that the doomed love story is more allegorical, an oblique way of reflecting on whatever darkness Jon-Rae has gone through.

Regardless, we do have some well-written tunes here, dealing with love and darkness.² Putting The River behind him³, it's a bit spare musically, but special notice must be made of Denver Rawson's trombone, which adds just enough to keep things from sounding too lean.

This disc is a welcome return for Fletcher, but I'm left with the impression that he isn't reaching as far as he could as a songwriter. Hopefully this'll be received warmly enough to encourage him to keep soldering on.

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¹ I'm aware here of the sort of tension in thinking that every "I" in a song up to this point has been an 'authentic' first-person report. But there remains a felt closeness in a song like "Fire", where it does feel like the product of an actual experience.

² Of the latter, "Downtown" takes its place in the noble subgenre of oblivion-seeking songs like Danny Whitten's "Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown" and Jimmie Dale Gilmore's "Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown"

³This shift has caused me some slight consternation when it came to filing this disc. Hitherto, his discs had been alphabetized under "J", for "Jon-Rae and The River", but this one clearly should go under "F". Does one break up the set, or file them all together?