Call Me Jolene - Diner
Yesterday I noticed a post on another site about a new track by one of my favourite new artists of 2015 and wondered why I hadn’t seen a press release about it. Had I been blacklisted? One of my throwaway comments been taken seriously? No, and no. It was just in a massive virtual sack of emails that all arrived at around the same time. It’s so easy to miss things when hundreds of new releases are placed in front of you every day. You can get to feeling like John Peel, opening the boot of his car and asking the previously hopeful, now crestfallen singer in a band to toss his demo tape in with the others.
And then there are days when you realise you’ve just compared yourself to John Peel, national treasureTM, and you wonder how it came to this.
You turn to twitter and spot a conversation involving Martin Rossiter. He’s talking about a guitar solo at the end of a song that one person has said sounds a little like the Manics. The track turns out to be Diner, released last month by Call Me Jolene, which Rossiter is a member of.
While he might be how I came to be listening to this wonderful track, it’s not all about Martin. Far from it. Sophie Pointer’s vocals are what draw you in, and keep you hooked right through to the spoken word section at the end, where it goes a bit Black Box Recorder, but without the viciousness.
Call Me Jolene are Sophie Pointer, Martin Rossiter, Chris Wright and Travis Oliver. Diner is their third release; you can find it on Bandcamp along with their other releases, May EP and Blaker’s Park.