Producer Bob Ezrin put his aural fingerprints all over the Jayhawks’ 2000 album, Smile, and those songs’ dizzying array of sounds, styles and tempos. That album’s experimentation likely put off some of the band’s old country-leaning fans, but helped get the attention of some new ones.
Twenty-six years later, as the Jayhawks celebrate their 40th anniversary, the band teams up with Ezrin once more. And if Sanctuary Park is notably less adventurous than Smile, it’s just as successful, doubling down on the band’s tried-and-true formula of recent years. Lyrics covering a broad range of emotions or concepts, usually supported by music with a comfortable, melodious exuberance, now carry the day. The band covers love, breaking away, putting one foot in front of the other and helping one another do the same.
“There is a gentleness and a sweetness to their sound, and I found myself craving a little more of that,” Ezrin has said.about working with the Jayhawks now.
The band’s previous album, 2020’s XOXO, reveled in its variety of songwriters and lead singers. All four band members had both solo and collaborative songwriting credits, and each took at least one lead vocal. It made for one of the most wide-ranging albums in the Jayhawks’ long career.
It’s different this time. Gary Louris wrote (or co-wrote) all 11 songs here, and sings lead on 10 of them. And while listeners this time around don’t get to hear whether drummer Tim O’Reagan or keyboardist Karen Grotberg would continue their growth trajectories (O’Reagan’s “Dogtown Days” and “Society Pages” were especially revelatory), they do get a bigger dose of Louris, whose body of work over four decades remains under-appreciated.
And what Sanctuary Park lacks in sheer variety, it more than compensates with a group of Louris songs playing to his strengths. Single “Keeping Our Heads Above Water” is a perfect example, its catchy, hummable music more upbeat than the resignation of its lyrics touting “taking all that you have to believe again.”
“Kingston Girl” is a happier song — maybe even catchier — which shows, as much as any other relatively recent Jayhawks song, why this band sounds so consistently good. This and most songs on this album highlight the band’s calling-card harmonizing, with Louris, O’Reagan and Grotberg captured in top form.
On “Hands on the Wheel,” a capella harmonies lead the way. On the exuberant “Always and a Day,” Louris takes one of his few guitar solos on this album; one of relatively few solos of any kind. In terms of instrumentation, beyond the standard band instruments, pedal steel makes an appearance on “Hands Upon the Wheel” and the loping “It’ll Be All Right Tonight,” while the accordion and mandolin pop out on on “Leap of Faith.” They’re used strictly for texture on Sanctuary Park.
There’s also a trip into history, with “Mr. Lincoln,” a Louris and Emerson Hart (of Tonic) song from the viewpoint of a member of a band playing for Abraham Lincoln as his funeral train passes. O’Reagan acquits himself well here on his only lead vocal turn.
And things even get political on “American Midnight.” Louris, now a permanent Canadian resident, has a few observations about current events in his native country: “Strike up the band, throw a parade/ Freedom rings with bullets/ Cries of children too afraid/ Am I too numb? What have I become?”
The album closes with acoustic ditty “Rowing the Boat,” which may be the most charming song on the album.
While you could describe the Jayhawks’ music in simple terms — pop, Americana, country rock and folk have all applied at one time or another — the truth is that the band’s music is a singular blend of all these styles, and probably others, too. Sanctuary Park is another effective distillation of these styles, and a welcome continuation of the Jayhawks legacy.
