There’s always an exception to the rule. And, we, as music collectors, hope that it’s the store, the streaming service or the critic that will reveal it to us. When they fail to locate it on our behalf, our instinct tends to be to blame the evil music biz bosses and their lack of caring.
Few of us venture further, tread out of our comfort zone, and use the bit of free time that we do have to try and locate a pop music treasure for ourselves. That’s a shame. If the prophecies are true and Lester Bangs has been given a ceremonial role in Heaven, what will he say once we’re before him at the Pearly Gates? “At least you heard the hits,” nah?
Jason Lenyer Buchanan is an exception. And the cleverly titled “Under a Thumbnail Moon” is a record waiting to be discovered in a world where record sleeves have gotten smaller, and the music inside of them, for most people, has become less consequential.
But you win something each time that you adopt one of those little treasures. Take the opening song from this EP. “If the Creek Don’t Rise” is a story of being pushed and pulled told over a Country & Western chord progression. It’s a tale as old as time. It’s a recording that seems to arrive out of a desert. And these are words that most people can recognise as being about themselves.
But there’s something else that helps this music feel relatable. It could be the warm tone of the vocals and the confident delivery. It could be the lyrical violin lines or the storytelling. Music like this is a mystery, not a recipe.
“These Thirty Acres” is a ballad about dreams surviving under the pressure of the ordinary world and all of its sins. The slow pacing of the track fits perfectly with Buchanan’s vocal twang.
And since the songwriter’s possibly earned your full attention by now, he’s comfortable enough to tell you some personal truths. “Sometimes” is an ode for those who dare to hope for the impossible to happen. “Better Parts of Texas” is a song for all the people whose work and honesty haven’t revealed the gifts that were promised. And, the piano-driven “The Aisle” is a hymn for forgiveness as a cure for burning love or hate.
Where does it leave us? As explorers, hopefully. The EP’s title track, “Under a Thumbnail Moon,” dares to pour some romance over this insensitive world. It’s Jason Lenyer Buchanan’s experience, and it’s everybody else’s story, too. It just takes one person to whisper a bit of truth for the view to become clearer. It’s worth continuing to explore because these truths alone.
