Northern Soul is back with The Jaded Hearts Club’s brand new debut album You’ve Always Been Here. Filled with dancehall classics and songs you probably forgot you’d ever heard, The Jaded Hearts Club give the 2020, stadium-filling touch to the genre that enlightened an entire generation, more than four decades ago.
The new album, You’ve Always Been Here, comprises of 11 covers, from Matt Bellamy’s fragment of ‘We’ll Meet Again’ to the wall of sound that is ‘Love’s Gone Bad’. The group carries Northern Soul into a new dimension, full of electric guitars, feedback, and the combined talent of musicians at the very top of their game.
In case you missed it, The Jaded Hearts Club are a supergroup in every single sense of the word. They have the most stellar line-up – Miles Kane (The Last Shadow Puppets) and Nic Cester (Jet) as joint frontmen, Graham Coxon (Blur) and Jamie Davis playing guitar, Matt Bellamy (Muse) on bass and Sean Payne (the Zutons) as the drummer. Sometimes Abi Harding (The Zutons) joins them on the saxophone.
To prove it, The Jaded Hearts Club released a series of singles leading up to this release: ‘Reach Out I’ll Be There’ (see below), ‘This Love Starved Heart Of Mine (It’s Killing Me)’ and ‘Love’s Gone Bad’. It seems fair to say that all the energy and glamour of The Jaded Hearts Club is found among these three singles; while the rest of the album tracks are exciting, they don’t have the explosive enthusiasm of their early singles. They come with energetic, lockdown-appropriate, black-and-white music videos, and Matt Bellamy in different but equally intriguing Rule Britannia-esque accessories. It’s all very, very cool.
Following these, You’ve Always Been Here has the best intentions in the world. The band’s desire to reinvent Northern Soul is overpowering and infectious, and you can sense how eager they were to find out what their combined talents could do. A lot, is the answer. Sometimes it completely hits the mark. Sometimes, though, it falls flat, stripping the covers of their unique qualities, leaving behind something that is undeniably very talented, but a little soulless.
Ultimately the album is technically impressive, but it wants for a sense of cohesion. In many ways so does the group themselves; the six (sometimes seven) strong and talented personalities sort of blur together. There is absolutely no doubt that this group could tackle any song in the world with spades of ability, but You’ve Always Been Here could probably have done with a bit more of a story. The Jaded Hearts Club are easily the greatest cover band in the world, but we don’t quite know what makes them tick.
All three of the album’s singles are particular highlights, as are Nic Cester’s ‘Long and Lonesome Road’ and ‘I Put a Spell on You’. To my mind, this is the version of the line-up which delivers the most. Nic Cester doing the vocals, accompanied by powerful percussion and the familiar wind instruments of Northern Soul feels like the group’s greatest strength – and where they’re strong, they’re unstoppable.
Since 2017, the group have shared powerful, covers of everything from the Beatles (their starting point) to The Isley Brothers. According to Rough Trade, Davis wanted a Beatles band to play for his birthday. He’s quoted as saying: “I knew a bunch of 1/2 decent musician friends so I asked if they’d form an early ‘60s Beatles band. Everyone had such a good time that we decided to do it again.” Their website declares that they “have been described as the ultimate Beatles cover band.”
Surely, in one of those dream dinner party games (six people on your ideal dinner table, dead or alive, you know the drill) you couldn’t come up with a better line-up. What we really want from The Jaded Hearts Club, though, is a bit of purpose – we all know that there’s a niche for them in this current moment, but none of us know why. When they do show us exactly what 21st century Northern Soul can do, it’s completely unforgettable.
