When your record is called CABBAGE and bears on its cover a head of green cabbage against a black background you better either be joking around or know damn sure what the hell you’re doing. James Cox a singer/songwriter who has lived in many rural places during his life, including Rocky Mountains, the Great Pacific Northwest and the Southeastern United States and currently resides in the Mississippi Delta, and the main man behind CABBAGE, is luckily the latter.
He cites among his musical influences Elliott Smith, Radiohead and Jeff Buckley, and one can hear each of these artists in some way, shape or form on this record, from its hushed and radiant beauty to its precisely wielded instrumentation. After the title opener, a short and sweet episode of found sounds and knocking around, comes the sweet slow burn of “All the Beautiful Things” which is haunting and beautiful at the same time. The song opens slowly like a flower in the phase of blooming. Cox’s melody unfolds like petals. He is a patient vocalist, a la Buckley; the words are spoken plainly and then kissed out into the air with an eerie sweetness. Next on “At the Altar” Cox starts out with an alt country soundscape that is upbeat and forceful. But this track is seven-minutes long and this is only the first of a folio of spaces this song will inhabit, as it reaches a powerful peak and then slowly becomes shrouded in a hazy mist of jazz drums and stand-up bass, interlaced with howling fiddle, and some sonic treatments that turn the song into something completely different. Later on “The Gardener” Cox opts for a more direct approach of heavy rock guitars and sooth-saying vocal repetition “A reminder of what is coming.” As it progresses the song becomes a fugue of rock a la Radiohead’s Ok Computer, and it sounds as though actual sparks may be coming from the shredding guitars. This then transitions to the relatively ‘80s Britpop sounds of “Under Cover of a Bald Shining Night,” which also serves to show the many sides of Cox’s abilities to create rock n’ roll in all its different forms. And for the closer “Winter Crop” Cox takes it on solo-acoustic and howls it out like he means every word. Like I said earlier if your record is called CABBAGE there better be something significant behind it. In this case there certainly is. James Cox is not being hokey anywhere on this record, and those who are willing to sit down and listen will be greatly rewarded for it.
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