Jesper Lindell - 3614 Jackson Highway (2026) [Hi-Res]

Most all within the sphere of my reach has a reverence for classic soul music. Not upper-cased to designate any genre distinction, but closer to the ground... the small “s” signifying what truly changes and crosses the course of our blood. We’ve sought solace and direction as if a spinning disc were a communion rail before which we surrender; as if at the bent knee of our parents. It’s a ritual that has remained fortifying and alive – because the music itself has: refusing challenges to its legacy and relevance by evolving as we do. Otis Redding, being but one sharp example, continues to sound like a living human being leaping from a pair of speakers because, in a very real way, he is one: his voice still reaching out with what poet William Carlos Williams called “the American grain” – and all the turbulence that continues to push it up and out of the barren ground; speaking from the past, but always in the present tense.

“Soul music” ultimately has less to do with a recipe of instrumentation and more to do with the alchemy of emotional intention. Although we can and do associate the atmosphere of many so-called “soul” records with horn lines, back beats, and grouped singers – none are requisite. Instead, what distinguishes soul is not a genre prescription but a willful determination to speak to the heavens from decidedly earthly entrapments; raging at the stars with at least one foot if not in the grave, then standing squarely upon one. I think now of soul music as a beautiful font, snapped against the living page when struck by the devotional, striving hand – and by which we can say anything and everything.

Jesper Lindell’s new work '3614 Jackson Highway' – envisioned, curated, and produced by Björn Pettersson – lowers a bucket into an old and deep well; and what they collectively draw to the surface is cool and clear; a balm to a world grown weary and seemingly detached from its own sense of identity; of any direction home. The framing is familiar; the songs likewise. But what moves within – fundamentally, essentially – is as Ezra Pound defined poetry: News that stays news.

Joe Henry
Harpswell, Maine