FOR HIS LATEST ALBUM, JIM PULLMAN GOES ... COMMUNIST? Jackals and Wolves is The Jim Pullman Band’s third and latest album, recorded and produced over twelve months, beginning in July 2010.

That lady contract killer, on the markets after dark, has done something dirty to Jim’s kick drum heart. 

If The Jim Pullman Band’s last album, 2008’s The End of the Beginning, aimed a new rock ‘n roll energy following a stark lineup change, the brand-spankin’ new release Jackals and Wolves aims for Jim Pullman at his most essential and honest, lending to a curious shift in style and an exceptional development in just about everything else. 

“I would say this record is the most emotionally raw record we have made.” – Jim Pullman on his band’s newly released third album

“We wrote (the last album) wanting to make a Ryan Adams rock record,” said Jim. “I really still love these songs, but the third album has songs I wrote for me. Not for going for a genre – I’m going for therapeutic.” 

It is this creative music therapy, touching on topics of lost love and essentially human aches that colorize the album’s purpose and execution. While most therapeutic songwriting endeavors result in self-defining chest beating, Jim’s songwriting aims for cynicism and sarcasm. The songs often produce lyrics with backhanded comments and snide remarks (the album kicks off with, “There were misspelled letters and poor punctuation/But yes I got your letter”). Jackals and Wolves is a snapshot of a rockstar unresolved, meandering a lonesome landscape of hard truths and attractive wrong answers. “I would say this record is the most emotionally raw record we have made,” says Jim.

But don’t confuse the record for a something to build a personality cult on wounded pride on. They recorded the album across 12 painstaking months beginning July 2010 with local audio engineer/producer Jaime Hansen and his mobile recording studio. The band dares again to stand among the Chippewa Valley music scene’s more compelling and innovative rock ensembles.

“If we wanted to try something we were going to try it, no matter how crazy it is,” said Jim. While The Jim Pullman Band typically exhibits the skills of singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter Jim Pullman, electric and upright bassist Eric “Pedals” Thompson, and drummer Joey Gunderson (and show band members John Kleven on guitar and Billy Angell on keyboard), about a dozen more local instrumentalists fill in as studio musicians. Hardly scratching the surface, there’s Bill Hamilton, Eric Lee, and Shane Leonard among them.

 

Jackals and Wolves, 2011

“It’s not so much the individual portrayal, as much as it’s the group that portrays themselves,” said Eric. “It’s exciting to hear the progress; it’s more of a collaboration.”

The album kicks off with whooshing air and guitar squeals giving way to Revolving Door, a strong rock song with a hook suggesting the best of Oasis, and rallies to an end with righteous guitar soloing punctuated by slams of grand piano. Then follows You Don’t Dump the Boys, They Just Lose Their Turn, an odd, sardonic track recalling The Turtles’ Happy Together, were it frolicking with the gleeful madness of an anxious and hopeless bar patron, featuring local trumpeter Jeff Walk. Randy House of Madhouse Films recorded a music video for the track at The Seahorse Inn (check it out on YouTube.com and MadhouseFilms.com). 

Sonically, the album lends a more lonesome tone than previous releases, although it’s the band’s the most dynamic and well-arranged. Providing the record’s most lofty and dramatic moments, Levitate opens with a flowing and majestic string quartet, arranged by The Perennials singer/guitarist Peter Dietrick. 50 Paces seems inspired by the lonely road ballads of Bob Seger, with a spacey and atmospheric pedal steel by Bronson Bergeson. And not to be outdone by other songs’ twisted-yet-tender moments, the album closer Feather Soft Heart (#7) reconsiders the other songs’ hard-bitten realism. Between soft percussion breaks and hushed piano progressions, Jim posits the question that, if we could set aside the defensive sarcasm for a couple minutes, could we build the courage to consider what we had was pretty good all along? 

Jim Pullman Band has two CD release shows: Aug. 18 at 6:30pm in Phoenix Park with Heart Pills & Leiah Webb, and Aug. 19 at 10pm in House of Rock with Meridene and Heroes of Tomorrow Night. Buy the album at Racy D’lene’s Coffee Lounge, Pedals Plus, Amazon.com, iTunes, and of course The Local Store. Also, find Jim Pullman on the Facebook.