A positive review of Jack Howard’s LightHeavyWeight 2 album.

Author:  Jeff Jenkins, Rhythms Magazine.

Date: June 2022.

Original URL: N/A.

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Jack Howard’s 2018 album, LightHeavyWeight, was a travelogue tour de force, taking the listener on a trip around the world as he documented his 2017 world tour with Midnight Oil.

For the sequel, Howard is bringing it all back home.

The record opens with ‘Sao Paulo’, “in a bar that spelt seduction”. But then Howard finds himself stranded in lockdown Melbourne, writing songs within a 5km radius, including “Elwood Canal”, “MCG”, and “Ciccioline”, the St Kilda haunt that’s populated by pop stars, poets and playwrights.

“Memories come flooding back,” he sings in his rick, sonorous tone. “The spring of ’98 was the year of my undoing. A final partying turned to drunken tears and pain.” Whether Howard is referring to the demise of Hunters & Collectors or something more personal, the result is a dark delight.

More than 40 years after he hooked up with Hunters & Collectors, another new song, “Grey Street”, finds Howard in a reflective mood, delivering a rap that’s hypnotic and nostalgic. “Took a punt and I joined the band,” he notes. Later, in “He Sings Hallelujah”, he returns to where his music journey took off, “1982 and the Seaview Ballroom”.

It’s not easy for an artist to emerge from an iconic band and forge a solo career. In his 2020 memoir Small Moments of Glory, Howard recalled a conversation with Mark Seymour: “We both assumed that the huge army of H&C fans would immediately be interested in our new music and we’d have an instant audience. How wrong we were.” But with LightHeavyWeight 2, Howard has crafted an intoxicated electro-jazz record. Inward-looking, cool and detached, but also strangely inviting.

“Play That Song Again” could easily be a club hit – I await the dance mix – while “Just The Wind Blowin”, with its swirling synths, captures a Shining-like sense of isolation and paranoia.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy? That’s not the case here. He’s delivered the best album of his solo career.

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