Stone Jack Jones has never divulged his real name or his true age, but given that he was drafted for the Vietnam War (but discharged with epilepsy), we can place the Nashville singer-songwriter somewhere in his late fifties or—more likely—his early sixties. He is, in other words, starting his career at a time in life when most artists are winding theirs down. His debut, Narcotic Lollipop, arrived in 2002, followed up by the excellent bluefolk in 2006, after which Jones took a hiatus of nearly a decade. On last year’s Ancestor, the spidery crawl of his guitar playing and the subdued croak of his vocals felt particularly compelling in the wake of so many dull revivalist bands mining the same Appalachian string-band history for inspiration. Perhaps due to his age and his experience—as an epileptic, as a nightclub owner, as a ballet dancer, carny, escape artist, lute player, thespian, father, and husband—Jones has a very distinct perspective on the joy of music and the burdens of life and death.
Throughout his brief musical career, Jones has refined a specific brand of minor-key Americana, rooted in the hills of his native Appalachia, in a way that casts him as an heir to a tradition rather than a student of history. To anyone who has heard any of his music, Love & Torture will sound instantly familiar—almost to its disadvantage. Perhaps because it was recorded with the same personnel and approach, Torture picks up almost exactly where Ancestor left off. It has the same side-scrolling pace, the same dreamy texture of guitars, and even long-time friends Patty Griffin and Kurt Wagner singing in the background. The album sounds less like a standalone collection and more like a sequel, as Jones seems to be settling into what has become his signature sound.
If many of the tracks on side one blend into one another, that may be due to Jones’ reliance on rigid song structures. He writes verses almost exclusively in couplets, and those pairings of rhyming lines lend the songs a similar lilt. Love & Torture turns livelier when he breaks free of that stricture, when the rhymes aren’t quite so neat, when it grows more and more unhinged. Jones and producer Roger Moutenot loosen the later songs from their careful structure and allow more rust and static to develop. The delicate melody "Ships" emerges from an indecipherable fog noise, while "Russia" features an all-studio singalong of the ramshackle chorus: "Meet me in Russia, we’ll have some vodka." It’s a throwaway line, but Jones and his motley crew invest it with dark possibility.
The most affecting moments have a similar inexplicability: "Song" descends into a din of disembodied applause, and the 6-minute "Who" unravels into tangles of distortion and errant harmonica chords, as though Jones is carving these songs out of hard stone. By the time "Say Amen" intones its benedictions, Love & Torture has come full circle, with Jones once again penning those familiar couplets and singing with what sounds like a newfound wisdom. It may tread the same rocky terrain, but it’s a journey worth taking.
