Jane Archer and the Reactionaries - The Great Atomic Power (2018)

Do you remember the days when the atom bomb was the sexiest thing around and Communists were hiding under every bed? Well, Arin Jonny Fourballs Jessup, David Fry and Jane Archer are here to remind you of those times with their new release “Great Atomic Power” on Booth Street Records. Written during the early stages of the Cold War, these songs preserve a sense of ambiguity: did the atomic age offer prosperity and hope or human extinction?

Jane Archer and the Reactionaries have a deep connection with bluegrass music. In the 1980s, when Jane wasn’t milking Guernsey cows, she attended many bluegrass festivals including several in Carlisle, Ontario where she saw Tony Rice, Bluegrass Cardinals, Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, Flatt and Scruggs, JD Crowe and the New South, Seldom Scene and many other bluegrass legends. The love of bluegrass was passed down to Jane’s nephew guitarist/vocalist David. Jane discovered guitarist/vocalist Arin when he was 18 and the two have been working together ever since. The Reactionaries revel in traditional bluegrass and bring that hard driving, high lonesome sound to this rarely heard repertoire.

Even today Cold War tensions echo through politics and nuclear arsenals still pose an existential threat to our entire world. The album’s artwork is taken from a pamphlet published in 1961 by the Government of Canada entitled Fallout on the Farm and offered practical advice about how to keep your family safe by building bomb shelters and how to hose radioactive dust off of your cattle.

The final track, “Old Man Atom,” exemplifies the humour and strange ironies at the heart of this album. The chorus is a haunting list of detonation sites while the verses are filled with a delirious humour “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men may be cremated equal.” When faced with self-inflicted extinction should we laugh or cry? “Great Atomic Power” says both.