Anyone who’s read Jakko Jakszyk’s 2024 autobiography Who’s The Boy With The Lovely Hair? will know that the latter-day King Crimson frontman and well-travelled multi-instrumentalist has a fair few tales to tell, and imparts them with engaging skill.
Perhaps while still in the mindset of exploring his own backstory, he’s released this ninth solo album with strong autobiographical elements woven throughout.
That’s one reason why Son Of Glen feels very much like a lyric-led album, with music created to frame personal thoughts and reflections, in a singer-songwriterly fashion that may seem in contrast with the Crimson work Prog readers best know him for.
He’s turned his hand to all kinds of music over the years, so even if his last solo outing, 2020’s Secrets & Lies, drew upon its fair share of proggy sounds, it’s perhaps in character for him to take another stylistic turn, channelling distinctly 80s-sounding styles of soft rock, AOR and easy-on-the-ears art-pop.
That works best when accompanying emotionally arresting words, such as the son-to-father entreaties of How Did I Let You Get So Old? and the flute-laced love ballad This Kiss Never Lies.
He lets rip on guitar and reminds us that just his six strings can light up any composition
Elsewhere, though, the music could sometimes do with a few more vibrant colours to bring the narratives to life. I Told You So is a slick 80s soul number to which you can picture a trio of backing singers swaying and clicking fingers on Later… With Jools Holland, but the groove is a little too bland against his description of himself as ‘a random piece of DNA just trying to survive.’
Somewhere Between Then And Now’s gentle, bittersweet meditation on unfulfilled dreams pricks up the ears with lines like, ‘As one more hero betrays our trust / That Georgie Best in each of us / Limps back to the changing rooms to die.’
But the song itself doesn’t make a huge impression until its latter stages when Jakszyk lets rip on guitar and reminds us that just his six strings can light up any composition.
The closing title track’s acoustic musings about his parents’ romantic path have an emotive quality, but meander for a little too long, until they build into something more dynamic and stirring towards the end, with help from a percussion cameo from former Crimson colleague Gavin Harrison.
Son Of Glen, then, has plenty to pique fans’ interest, even if it veers a long way from traditional prog territory. While his words often strike resonant chords, sometimes they could do with equally attention-grabbing accompaniment.
Son Of Glen is on sale now via InsideOut.
