Review: Jonathan Sebastian Knight
The internet is awash with opinion and conjecture. When a lonesome blogger sets fingers to keyboard to express feelings about a struggling artist it is all but lost in a sea of white noise; which is a shame really when you stumble across an artist like Jonathan Sebastian Knight.
An unspecified amount of time ago, I heard a small Scottish band with a big name called My Cousin I Bid You Farewell. The music was distorted, ramshackle and emotive. I ended up writing a little about them under the ‘Listen To’ section here. Since this time however MCIBYF have split and thus it was with some anticipation that I found out that Knight had gone solo, armed with his new Manhunter EP. This behemoth, for behemoth it is, may stand at a mere three tracks yet Knight is so barefaced in his pain that listening to each song becomes akin to knitting at the guillotine; a ghoulish and shameful voyeurism into one man’s gnashing of teeth. Listening to these songs is as traumatic as it is addictive.
Opener ‘Horizons’ addresses a bleak future whilst addressing an equally bleak past. An eerie synth and an even eerier baritone backing vocal are the only things that support Knight as he wails “All the priests in all the world couldn’t bless my wicked heart”. Simple piano chords echo out a touching riff for what sounds like a man falling apart.
‘Sweet Souvenir’ traverses similar grounds, driven forward by an irresistible reverb soaked guitar line that splices Knight’s torment in two. “I remember everything” he confesses as more piano carries us through his suffering.
‘Flood’ may move away from the abstract space that Knight has carved out in the previous two songs but for all the sparkling guitar offered up, his emotional composition remains distraught: “In my hands I’m holding a future of my own” he optimistically states before begging for a flood to come. “Forgive my sins” he repeats again over an ever drumless backdrop.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the root of the sorrows Knight expresses in his music, but he is skilled in his portrayal of human torment. Perhaps Manhunter sought to expound on distress in a manner that fitted the subject. Perhaps it’s simply disturbing to think that a sane man could have made such a brooding, dark hearted recording.
Nonetheless, music is emotion and it is here that Knight triumphs. He presents each of his trio of mournfulness as giant slabs of unabashed emotion, something that acclaimed pop-rock artists such as Coldplay, Snow Patrol and a latter day U2 strive for and fail to do regularly. There is no doubting that for some, listening to Manhunter will be like running through glue, the songs too rich for their blood. Yet for those brave enough to peer into the madness of Knight’s mind they will find a moving and rewarding record of extraordinarily bleak perfection.
Manhunter is out now. Listen to / download the whole of this EP for a mere £2 from: http://jonathansebastianknight.bandcamp.com/
