Jonathan Wilson, "Gentle Spirit"
Mitch is looking for a reason not to stay drunk all the time
Mitch’s Pitch:
I totally fell for it, man.
I grew up thinking that hippies were the coolest thing ever. That they were the only ones who really got it. A ragtag group of misfits and outsiders figured out that “the system” was broken and that “the man” couldn’t be trusted. They knew that life should be about the passionate pursuit of love and art, and not the unquenchable thirst for money and power.
All these years later, I still believe in those hippie ideals, even if it turned out that the original hippies were largely a bunch of selfish hypocrites, who went from Woodstock to Wall Street, and from decrying the violence at Altamont to cheering on the violence at the Capitol.
I turned on, I tuned in, I dropped out, and I ended up alone and adrift in modern society. Too smart for QAnon, too much of a slacker for Antifa, and I can’t even find a decent hacky sack circle anymore.
And then I heard Jonathan Wilson’s Gentle Spirit and I realized that I wasn’t so alone after all.
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Jonathan Wilson’s spirit has been floating around Newbury Street for quite some time now, as we’ve already discussed his work as a producer (for Father John Misty and Dawes), as a guitar player (for Roger Waters), and we’ve also featured many of his All New, All Different Laurel Canyon jam buddies (The Jayhawks, Chris Robinson, The Heartbreakers), so it’s overdue that we celebrate Wilson directly, the Zelig of Psychedelia, with a deep dive into his singular artistic statement and musical masterpiece, Gentle Spirit.
Another true “solo” album, Wilson recorded, produced, and wrote every song (except for the Gordon Lightfoot cover), and played almost every instrument, aside from a few sit-ins that seem to be more out of a desire for good vibes than necessity. Usually we think of true “solo” albums as being stripped down affairs - the old Bruce sitting at the kitchen table with a cassette deck kind of thing - but Gentle Spirit has the richness and full sound that you’d expect from an orchestra (if that orchestra was from outer space. And tripping.)
Wilson uses his production gifts to create a warm, immersive sonic soundscape that gives an incredible consistency to this album. While each song is unique, they also blend together seamlessly to create a magical universe full of natural beauty.
Gentle Spirit is not a concept album per se, but it’s more coherent than most concept albums. It’s a cyclical tale of birth and death, creation and destruction, and the dueling urges of man. It contrasts the purity of nature with the corruption of society, and what it feels like to live at the crossroads of both. It’s about the tension between the desire to drop out of society - to make like Thoreau and hide in the woods - with the acceptance that we need other people, no matter how flawed we all may be.
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First and foremost, Jonathan Wilson is an astonishing guitar player - clean but with a powerful attack - as best proven by the aforementioned Lightfoot song, “The Way I Feel”. His guitar playing is clearly the most memorable aspect of this album, driving incredible songs like “Desert Raven” and “Natural Beauty”. He definitely evokes a Gilmourian/Floydian feel, which explains why Waters hired him for his touring band.
In contrast to the dominant guitar, his vocals tend to be demure, half-whispered, and part of the sonic blend rather than a lead instrument. I love how his words cascade like a waterfall in “Canyon in the Rain,” and how he leads the Ent-like chorus in “Ballad of the Pines”. By sublimating the vocals it’s almost as if Wilson is saying that man is a part of nature, but not above it.
I also love how Wilson plays with tempo - the change from the upbeat and idyllic natural verses of “Can We Really Party Today” to the downbeat and dour choruses that bring us back to reality - adroitly using the structure of the songs themselves to reinforce his themes.
More than any memoir could ever be, Gentle Spirit is a full expression of Jonathan Wilson’s spirit, his soul, his ethos, his taste, and his gifts. It’s obvious that he poured every bit of himself into his album, and the results are beautiful and life-affirming.
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Gentle Spirit could have come out in 1971 or 2021 and it would sound and feel just as relevant and timeless as it did when it was released in 2011. For me, it has taken on totemic proportions over the last dozen years. I listen to it all the time - often very late at night - and take solace in the fact that while the hippies may be long gone, their gentle spirit lives on in the hearts and souls of some of us, who still believe that people are inherently good, despite all of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Ken’s Response:
I’ve been watching a lot of Better Call Saul over the past several weeks. If you don’t know the show, it’s a prequel to Breaking Bad (the greatest show in the history of television). It’s beautifully shot from a cinematography standpoint, it’s brilliantly edited, the writing is intriguing and fresh, the acting can hold its own with any other show out there…but there’s still something that holds it back each and every week. It’s overly indulgent and it takes way too long for the stories to unfold. It’s a wonderful show that could claim its place on the Mt. Rushmore of TV if it would just move along a little faster.
As Mitch pointed out, Jonathan Wilson has made a couple of appearances at EONS over the last two years, including doing amazing production work on an album I pitched, Dawes’ All Your Favorite Bands. Wilson is a musical genius, a singer-songwriter possessing incredible talent, but his real strength is that of one of the most talented ears for music since Quincy Jones and Sir George Martin.
A gorgeous album through and through, Gentle Spirit is Wilson at his best, combining non-traditional instrumentation, sparse jazz progressions, and wispy, emotional vocals that present us with a stunning canvas of psychedelic, folk rock.
I want to tell everyone about the beauty of the title track, the joy I hear when I listen to “Desert Raven”, the full-body, mind-blowing trip of “Canyon in the Rain”, or the incredible cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Way I Feel”. That’s what Jonathan Wilson music does; it makes you want to tell everyone you know to go listen right away.
It’s not all great though. Like Better Call Saul, it has a tendency to go on a few minutes too long on several tracks. I have nothing against longer songs, but when the last 90 seconds are just continuing what the first 90 seconds did, it’s too long and it comes across as a bit self-indulgent.
Having said that, this is a lock for the Collection and I’d be proud to put it up on the shelves.
Pitch Successful (you had me at Laurel Canyon)
CJ’s Response:
Kris, Andre and I were supposed to share a triple in one of the nicest dorms on campus for our sophomore year. Not only was it a triple in a dorm full of quads, but it was a corner room which meant it was more than roomy enough for the three of us.
Then Andre didn’t show up and the room got even bigger.
For reasons that were never entirely clear, Andre decided college wasn’t for him. While we were bummed that our friend wasn’t coming back to school, our disappointment was tempered by the fact that we now had one of the most ridiculously large and well-appointed two-person rooms in the entire university.
Kris and I wasted no time in decorating it with typical dorm stuff—tapestries, posters, lava lamps and glow-in-the-dark stars and planets that we plastered all over the ceiling. As we drifted off to sleep each night, we filled all that empty space with music. At first, we played Dark Side of the Moon while we gazed up at the artificial night sky. But just as we were falling asleep, the alarm clocks at the beginning of “Time” would go off and scare the shit out of us.
So, we switched to Kitaro whose New Age music was very popular among college students who enjoyed substance-enhanced relaxation. At the time, it was rumored that Kitaro was a Buddhist monk who came down out of the mountains once a year to record an album before retreating to his high-altitude hermitage. I preferred to think he was some guy named Dave who sold vacation timeshares when he wasn’t mastering the water pipes. This was well before the internet, so you were free to believe whatever you wanted until you learned otherwise.
At any rate, Kitaro was my first exposure to atmospheric music. And even though I’d never listened to a Jonathan Wilson album, Mitch’s pitch made me think I was going to have a field day making fun of the kind of music I used to fall asleep to. When I heard the opening track, I already had the snark locked and loaded:
From my notes: “Gentle Spirit” sounds like the kind of song that would be playing in the background as Mary Stuart Masterson loses her virginity in a latter-day John Hughes movie.
Then I listened to the rest of the album.
Somewhere between “Desert Raven” and “Ballad of the Pines” I stopped trying to think of smarmy things to say. As a Gordon Lightfoot fan, I was impressed when we arrived at “The Way I Feel”. By the time I got to “Rolling Universe” and “Magic Everywhere” I was enthralled. Then halfway through “Valley of the Silver Moon”, I sent the following text to Mitch:
Dammit! This is beautiful. You bastard!
As he had with Gene Clark, Mitch found a sleeper of an album that appealed to my penchant for emotive storytelling. The more I listened to the album the stronger it got. And I couldn’t help but see it as a valued member of the EONS Collection.
I wonder if Mary Stuart Masterson feels the same way.
Pitch Successful (Glow-in-the-dark stars are still cool, right?)
Mitch’s pitch was successful and Jonathan Wilson’s Gentle Spirit has gracefully descended upon the Newbury St. Collection.
Dear friend, it’s time to hop in your 69 Corvette and head to the comments section where we’d love to love your thoughts on JW’s Gentle Spirit. Does it make you feel so alive or is it hard to get over?
Please join us next week as Ken goes dancing in the street of Hyannis with the boys from Boston.
Part of being a member of Generation X is the sense that you missed out on all the good times in places like Laurel Canyon. Jonathan Wilson just marched up there and established his own early 70s. I respect that! Great album and another top post.