Jamie Webster – 10 For the People Review

Dullard tones from post-mod indie booms still grate the ears, then. For those who are hellbent on The Lathums or The Reytons, the works of Jamie Webster will settle neatly into the idle DVD screen of your brain. Clutter for the mind, another bit of charmless wonder for thoughts to ping off. 10 For the People is collective music for the masses made for those who dislike the idea of sharing. For the people who believe Oasis is “biblical” and shrug their shoulders when seeing Billy Bragg as a featured artist to Webster, who spurns a Mumford and Sons-adjacent vocal performance with some neat and heavy bass to disguise those contemporary and cluttered autobiographical charms. He is a man who believes his success was unlikely and charts as much on opener Better Day.  

But what more can he do now his feet-stomping action has led him to this point? Jolly tunes and brass selections, the backing vocalists who craft this warm blanket of equality and melody from Brooke Combe. Those big band feels of the opener are soon lost, of course, to the Gerry Cinnamon stomps and groans of Voice of the Voiceless. He whips out a bit of Scouse phlegm surprisingly absent from his opener and settles back into who he perceives as his people. He is still rooted in the area and though his perspective has not changed, Webster finds himself recalling past glories a tad prematurely. Instrumentals throughout are marked with relative quality but feel as though they are processed to get people moving in as quick a fashion as possible. Heartfelt tunes are earned, not made. Webster peddles to the same crowd who still mill around to Belter. Standards are dropping. 

Surprises are around every corner for 10 For the People though and had it not been the relatively plain vocals of Webster, the instrumentals alone would be well worth the listen. The crooning creativity and upbeat, fulfilled style of Lovers in the Supermarket is a neat slice of kitchen sink clarity. Dulled and numb, a tad straightforward in its lyrics, but the sentiment is there and genuine. He spends the whole song pointing out what he sees in the frozen section of Iceland and then finds himself carried further by strings and mocking the sentiments of Molly Mae on Dolly Bird. It soon shifts into cruise control and the likes of Looking Good and Sing Your Tears pass without hassle. 

10 For the People, an eleven-track record, comes and goes without much fuss. Middle-of-the-road tunes posing as folk punk will be championed for the wrong reasons by the wrong crowd. You cannot change the listener but you can change their attitude with a change of pace. Nothing Webster does here is out of pace or step with what he has and always will offer. Why a song now needs chapters rather than proper narrative progression is unexplainable, but The Boy (Chapter 1) and The Boy (Chapter 2) have another sense of club-oriented antics to them. Webster must transition out of this now, pushing thirty and still attending sticky-floored nightclubs is a warning light rather than a warm hit of nostalgia. So too is 10 For the People, a dated collection of songs which has all the fumbled political marches of being a decade late to issues moved on from Webster’s point.