Tomorrow the Green Grass

Blue opens the record wonderfully, an acoustic ballad with a country flavour , understated and elegant electric lead playing from Louris, those Olson-Loris harmonies that stand the hairs on end. Most importantly perhaps, the lyrics are always awesome, never flashy but plain and beautiful - as Tom Waits said about someone else - like a bird sitting on a wire for a second, then flying off. On occassion the guitars are louder and rockier - Miss William's guitar and 10 Little Kids especially, but always a sense of wonder, tinged with meloncholly that is never wearing or tiresome, but perfect - 10 Little Kids feels like finishing work on a balmy Friday evening in July - that good!

The consistently high level of songwriting we are treated to on this record is staggering! I truly believe them all to be classics - from Ann Jane's innocent sorrow to Red's Song's jubilance, The Jayhawks really lay it down. Grand Funk's 'Bad Time' is far and away the worst thing on the record! Perhaps the ballads are their strongest point - Two Hearts and Over My Shoulder are so (sorry to use the word again) achingly beautiful that they deserve to be heard by us all.

If you have never heard this record, then I envy you the pleasure of for the first time hearing a record of pure talent - love of writing songs, love of performing them, love of the songs themselves and the love of life and of love itself that makes being around so great. As it says on the liner notes 'dig in, there's plenty to go 'round...'

From Blue onwards, it's difficult to skip a song. You might read the sleeve and think, "I'll just miss a couple and go on to 'Bad Time'" but then the first bars of Two Hearts ease in and you take your hovering finger from the CD player.

The tone, as you'd expect from the Jayhawks, is consistently bright, but there's a pervading sadness to the set. Very much akin to looking back whistfully on a childhood. It's a difficult emotion to pin down but it satisfies wondrously.

High points (and there are many) include the breathtaking "Blue" and "Bad Time", but my personal favourite is the agonisingly restrained "Ann Jane", a song that reinforces the notion that you don't have to say everything in a lyric - combined with the haunting accompaniment, this join the dots becomes a wrenchingly sad look back on a pained life.

Every song is excellent. More directly connectable with Gram Parsons and, in a sideways sort of way, Fairport Convention, the only thing that stops me pinning on a fifth star is that Gram got their first and defined this genre - that said, few have revisited it with such emotional power since.

I became interested in this album when I saw the video to "Blue" and was grabbed by its strong, yearning harmonies. It gets better. This track opens the album but is eclipsed by the next three tracks, each with a different flavour. The aching "Two Hearts" is an overwhelming experience. Inevitably, the standard is too high to maintain, but "Tomorrow The Green Grass" only dips slightly during a couple of more sombre moments and it would be misleading to suggest that there is anything less than excellent here.

It's galling that so much is made of the patchily-excellent Wilco and that awards are waved at the slightest suggestion of a comeback by yesterday-men like Dylan when the plaudits should be going to these chaps. This is the best album of the 1990s, no messing. If you appreciate substance, you can't go wrong with this.