Shangri La - Jake Bugg - Album Review

Since I heard that the follow up to Jake Bugg’s hugely successful debut would be blessing my ears by the end of this year, I was extremely excited. To me this was one of the most anticipated albums of the year between the likes of Vampire Weekends “Modern Vampires of the City” and Arctic Monkey’s fifth release “AM”. When I went to purchase the album, just a couple of days after the release, the girl at the counter of JB-Hifi warned me that her and a few of her work mates who are proclaimed “Bugg lovers” thought the album fell very short of his initial debut album. Despite the warning I was given I delved deep into Shangri La.

The album begins with the country inspired track “There’s A Beast and We All Feed It” which sounds extremely similar to the track “Trouble Town”, off his highly acclaimed debut album. The only real difference to “Trouble Town” is a much brighter sound, which is partially due to a different take on recording techniques. Although it is a good track, I was not entirely impressed that it seemed that Jake was not ready to venture out into a new sound.

The slick and snappy electrified tracks “Slumville Sunrise”, “What Doesn’t Kill You” and “King Pin” see a much grittier side of Bugg which do add a new dimension to the sound that listeners are used to and are some of the best tracks off the album. Although it’s clear that his mantra for this album is “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”. Bugg returns to his roots in “Messed Up Kids” which tells a story of kids who “deals a bit of blow on the side” and other housing estate shenanigans that is heard in the debut. It was great to hear a softer side of Jake in the second half of the album with songs like “Broken”. The second half is full of lovely ballads which are as beautiful and delicate as the previous track, which he pulls off perfectly. My personal favourite is the delicate “Pine Trees” which sees a softly picked acoustic guitar underneath Jake’s less nasal mannerism which really make the track something special. Despite being a die-hard Jake Bugg fan this album fell short of what I expected it to be. Nonetheless it is a good album just not great. The hype surrounding producer Rick Ruben just made things more disappointing in my opinion. The title of “musical genius” is really not one to be bestowed upon him, as much as it pains me to say. Hearing suggestions that this album puts him in the light of great British song writers such as Noel Gallagher and Alex Turner honestly annoys me as realistically he co-writes majority of his songs. As for the people who write his songs, they write for likes of Kylie Minogue, Victoria Beckham, Olly Murrs, and other talent show winners which is a bit hypocritical of Jake who bags out X-Factor continuously. It’s not to say the songs aren’t good but this sophomore album definitely was too over hyped.

Review by Serina Molnar

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