Rock music, as is the case with all great genres of pop music, is all about storytelling. Rock musicians want to develop narratives that are bigger than the lyrics they sing and using everything from guitars to enormous beats, they do as much when they step into the studio to make something intriguing for their audience.
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Cody Jasper is as much a student of the Nashville tradition as he is anything in rock, and you can hear that as he starts to play his new single “Who You Are.” Instead of rounding out this story with a lot of twang and relaxed rhythm, we’ve got some pick-up in this performance that is staggeringly more imposing than anything you’re going to hear on CMT this summer.
Jasper smartly avoids putting all of his creative eggs in one basket here, pushing a hook that is as indebted to his voice as it is anything the backing band is working on at the same time. It’s amazing to hear an indie artist this technical with their work, especially in a style as uniquely American as what country-rock is and always has been.
Cody Jasper is a singer first and foremost, but the adrenaline with which he slings a guitar part around in this single is enough to make anyone into a fan of this genre. He doesn’t have any issue scaling a big harmony, and one could even gather from “Who You Are” that he has a lot more excitement in the studio when he’s given something to conquer rather than a subject to simply cover.
Excess is admittedly an element of this song’s construction, but its unhesitant presence is one that suggests a lot more of an experimental quality in Jasper’s direction than what I initially thought I might hear in this single. I think there’s a lot of acoustic potential for “Who You Are,” and this is only ever true of songs that would sound good stripped-down, to begin with. The piano, the drums, and even some of the bass parts are a little loud and quite proud overall, and at no time does their indulgent contribution affect how we interpret the emotion at hand in these lyrics.
I don’t think there’s going to be any debate when it comes to the quality of this all-new release by Cody Jasper, and for a player as clearly made for the stage as he is, he’s doing a good job of giving us a great performance from within the four walls of a recording space some would find a little restrictive in his position.
This is, after all, an artist who doesn’t want to be defined by a scene or the forerunners who were responsible for giving us both country music and rock n’ roll so many generations ago, and to have put something as thorough on tape as Jasper does with “Who You Are,” it speaks volumes about what he could potentially do with a little more creative freedom and financial wiggle room supporting his efforts.
Jodi Marxbury