Last Updated on February 22, 2022, 6:40 PM | Published: February 22, 2022
OKLAHOMA CITY (Free Press) — It’s easy to slap a “Country” label onto Jason Scott’s music, but something as simplistic and traditional as that just feels a bit wrong.
On the Okie singer/songwriter’s rootsy, raucous new full-length album, “Castle Rock,” Scott and his band, The High Heat, pull out just about every stop you could think of in their quest to keep the listener on their toes.
Sure, it’s country music in that it’s straightforward, twangy, and unabashedly southern, but the songs here are creative and daring in ways rarely expected from the genre. The sound throughout is so modern, the energies on display so decidedly fiery and youthful, that you’d picture the band leading an indie-rock crowd in a fist-pumping sing-a-long way before ever picturing them scoring a honky tonk line dance.
And yet, the songs on “Castle Rock” don’t even once come across as some kind of rejection of the label or the country music tradition, rather they serve as an almost revelatory reminder of what can be powerful, gripping, and even dangerous about the best country music.
The easiest comparisons are to the great recent country disrupters, particularly Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson, and while there is more than a fair bit of overlap and similarity in their sounds, there’s something different in Scott’s songwriting.
The focus isn’t on the kind of lonely, recovering depression of much of Isbell’s output, nor on Simpson’s brand of middle-finger-to-the-establishment anger. There’s another palpable, ever-present element to the lyrics here: fun.
Even though much of the content is rooted in well-trod ground for sad country and southern rock (working class exhaustion, shell-shocked soldiers, homesickness, drug addiction,) Scott retains a slight wry, defiant sense of humor and an insistent funkiness in the music that keeps your foot tapping even when some of the lyrical intensity begins to set in.
For the entirety of “Castle Rock’s” runtime, the comparison I couldn’t shake wasn’t any of the modern alt-country acts or “red dirt” rockers, but the legendary outsider-country storytelling of Kris Kristofferson. Scott can spin a yarn, paint a cinematic landscape, or drop an unexpected high-brow literary reference just as easily as Mr. Kristofferson (is the song “So It Goes” a nod to Vonnegut? I can’t say for sure, but I’d like to think so,) and do it all with a driving energy and creativity that propels each song forward into the next.
In an era increasingly dominated by EPs and single releases that appeal to shrinking attention spans and non-stop hustle culture, the fact that a 45-minute, 11-track album can remain so compelling and so consistently exciting throughout is a clear testament to the guys in The High Heat.
Each and every song has its own character, sometimes raunchy, sometimes funky, sometimes slow and low or even bumping up against arena rock. Nearly every track takes at least one sharp left turn into unexpected territory, tossing in a fuzzed-out guitar solo or psychedelic organ break, a tempo change or half-time drop. Every song tells its own story with its own character, but they all play together surprisingly well and cohesively.
For all of its creativity and boundary-pushing within the confines of country, “Castle Rock” is still confidently Oklahoman, not just in name-dropping Cleveland County and Noble and regional checkpoints like Sundance Square in Fort Worth, but in its stubborn refusal to be easily definable or to stop changing and evolving. Like OKC itself, this album never stays the same for long.
Even this early in the year, it’s safe to say that 2022 will have a hard time topping “Castle Rock.”
“Castle Rock” by Jason Scott & the High Heat is available now on all streaming services and Bandcamp. Keep up with news, reviews, videos, and live dates at jsandthehighheat.com, and follow them on Facebook at facebook.com/jsandthehighheat and Instagram and Twitter @jasonscottmusic.
And … this!
You can catch Jason Scott & the High Heat live Tuesday, March 1st at Tower Theatre as they open up for 90s college rock kings Gin Blossoms, who will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of their still-fantastic breakthrough album “New Miserable Experience” by performing the entire record front-to-back.
Gin Blossoms have always been one of the best-loved and most enduring bands of that first great “alternative rock” period, and “New Miserable Experience” is absolutely loaded with some of the best tracks of the era.
Tickets are on sale now at towertheatreokc.com.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
