Following in the footsteps of previous incarnation, The Rising, Tommy Overington continues to soar, riding the breeze and catching the thermals as new band Jacoby revel in Shamanic Ecstasy, their debut long player featuring singles Freedom Ain’t No Sin and Do the Right Thing. But just what is Shamanic Ecstasy?
“In Shamanism, the ecstatic experience connotes a state of bliss, transcendence, and communion with the sacred. Shamans utilize techniques such as journeying, trances, and altered states of consciousness to achieve ecstatic experiences” Bob Waxman (Ph.D.)
When you boil that down, it’s pretty much what I want from music. I want it to take me to a state of bliss, to transcend and alter my state of consciousness taking me on a journey to another place and time in my mind. That’s just what a great album does for me, music is a form of escapism, an opportunity to leave behind the real world, even if it’s just for an hour at a time.
At it’s very heart, Jacoby is a psychedelic rock band, a fact which should be obvious to the listener from the off with the colourful cover artwork by James Harris. However, they aren’t a one trick pony on Shamanic Ecstasy. The band take that psych blueprint and add their own flourishes and influences to the mix creating a sound that is triumphantly brash and bombastic in places, with the sweeping melodies take to the wing and soar majestically, while also retaining an element of soulful reflection in the likes of Shout it Out and Ballad of the Enlightened Man.
On Shamanic Ecstasy, there is a lot going on. As I listen, apart from the baseline of psychedelic rock. I can hear a lot of musical reference points, from nods to the Stones and the Beatles in the lyrics, through to vocals that at times reflect the tone and style of The Leveller’s Mark Chadwick. On Paradise, the intro initially took me back to Babylon Zoo’s Spacemen, but in actual fact, as the song reveals itself, it feels more like it takes some of its keyboard sounds and riffs from prog rock, dare I say, Marillion at their high point (I say that as a sincere compliment despite some of my compadre’s ridiculing me for my love of Fish-era Marillion) in fact, it sounds to me like there is a tiny vocal nod to Fish at one point in the echoing element of the refrains in the closing part of the song “waiting where we walk…”
There is a further element of sounds of the 70s threading through the songs, the album opens with the deep heavy throb of What’s Inside reflecting elements of the likes of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath rumbling through its core, while elsewhere, Metamorphosis has an uplifting synth line reminiscent of ELO. The closing song Ballad of the Enlightened Man moves forward a couple of decades and across the Atlantic with a sound not too far removed from the 90s rock sound plyed by the likes of Moist and Stone Temple Pilots.
Alongside the two singles, the crunching anthemic Freedom Ain’t No Sin and the uptempo foot-tapper Do the Right Thing, the biggest earworm for me has got to be Manhattan, with its swirling psychedelic organ sound and hook laden chorus and harmonies that keeps popping up again and again & going around and around in my head since I first listened to the album.
Staying with the subject of “the mind” as the mighty Purple One Prince once sang (before the time of his own psychedelic album Around the World in a Day):
“Instead of asking him how much of your time is left. Ask him how much of your mind babe…”
So if de-elevator ever tries to bring you down, revel in some Shamanic Ecstasy as you punch that higher floor.