The single releases that have led up to the release of Pioneers and Fragrant Flowers have been a bit like tuning into episodes of your favourite classic western. We have crossed the prairies to the dulcet tones of “Fragrant Flowers,” taken a sympathetic look at the people and culture that those early settlers encountered with “Native American Sweetness,” and we have brawled and conned our way through the saloons and card tables of the western expansion in the company of “Dusty Danny.”
And as familiar as those themes might be, Pioneers and Fragrant Flowers is built on much deeper concepts than you realise. In turn, these three songs remind us of the beauty that was destroyed by the race to tame the west, the cultures crushed along the way, and it shows characters like our gun-happy card shark to be the cliché that he is.
Musically, Stephen Jacques takes the singer-songwriter form into some interesting territory. “Smoking Trail” is drapped in drifting and delicious steel pedal guitar and incandessent vocals to create a blend of the earthly and otherworldly, “Wheel Done Broke” is not only a country-rock groover but it reminds us of what a unique vocal delivery he has, short, sharp stacatto salvos of punkish power, and “Sunset Horsey” ends with us riding off into the setting sun to the sound of poetic prose and sweet sonic strands.
Steven Jacques always gives us more than just an album of songs. Here, he reminds us of two crucial points. Firstly, the singer-songwriter format has much more to offer when it is pushed into fuller band territory, allowing those core sonic ideas to be expanded and built upon, musically broadened, and creatively deepened. But, perhaps more importantly, that most people’s idea of history in general, and the opening up of the West in particular, is not what we imagined it to be. The popular understanding of such events is mired in clichés and jingoism, lacking nuance and insight. It often seeks to justify Manifest Destiny while offering apologies for acts carried out in its name. And in that regard, Pioneers and Fragrant Flowers is as good a history lesson as any you will get outside a degree course in modern history.
