Five years ago, the Jayhawks reunited, with original co-leader Mark Olson returning alongside Gary Louris, to release the delightful Mockingbird Time. Sadly, Olson is gone again for its follow-up, but Jayhawks fans need not fear, for album No 9 sounds just as you’d expect the Jayhawks to sound: modest, uninsistent, and rocking in a gentle way, save for when Louris lets his guitar squall through the otherwise modest, uninsistent, and gentle country-funk of Ace. Paging Mr Proust is an apt title, because 30 years on from their debut, the Jayhawks – though no nostalgia act – serve very much as a memory prompter: it’s hard not to feel nostalgic listening to the easy musical chemistry between their principals. There’s a faint hint of modernity in the processed, mechanised percussion that opens Pretty Roses in Your Hair, but the title alone is enough to tell you Louris’s songwriting has not ventured into exploring alt-R&B. There may not quite be the soaring quality of songs here that Hollywood Town Hall or Rainy Day Music offered, but its pleasures are manifold.
