Having a “Lost Weekend” with Jack Oblivian

Jack Oblivian has a new record out called “Lost Weekend”. Everyone’s been pretty excited about the Oblivians playing out lately, and this album just adds to the excitement. As far back as 2009/10, he had been thinking about taking all these home recordings he had been doing and putting together a cassette-only “mixtape” sort of thing. Most of the songs are Jack playing everything, there are a few that also feature his backing band the Sheiks (Keith Cooper, Graham Winchester, and Frank McLallen), and a couple featuring other musicians like Seth Moody, Adam Woodward, Jeff Pope, and Scott Bomar to name a few. All the songs feature that great raw playing and rock and roll soul you’ve come to expect from one of Jacks records.

About 3 years ago he pressed up about 200 tapes of about an hour long set of instrumentals and random songs that ended up on other records out there. A while back some of the songs made it onto Youtube and caught the attention of friend, and fan, Marco who runs Ghost Highway Records out of Spain. They had a few conversations back and forth and ultimately decided to go for it. Jack narrowed down what would have been about a double album’s worth of tracks down to the 16 heard here. There are some fully formed songs and ideas that get fleshed out into real cuts, while there are also just some cool instrumental riffs, a couple with no bridges and a bunch of short blasts of rock.

This is a great collection and a cool way to look at an artist and his progression of where the songs go, how you bring them into a band setting or just keep them as a solo work. Sound wise this is the pure Memphis rock and roll you’ve come to love from Jack with his great solo work, to the many band projects and the mighty Oblivians. A bunch of hopped-up noisy garage rockers, some great soul swagger, a little twist and twang, killer organ touches, and bluesy overtones. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve rarely been disappointed with anything he’s put to tape. This one is no exception.