Jacob Cole’s vivid new album Slow Gold continues a journey towards creating music that embodies the emotional weight and storytelling essence of his favorite singers and songwriters, but without lyrics or the human voice.
“I'm just trying to evoke a mood or a feeling that the music I love the most gives to me. The feeling of sitting in my bedroom at fourteen hearing something magical like Roy Buchanan or Gillian Welch for the first time at around twenty-one. As we get older most of those moments of transformation through music, music that can change the way you see the world, seem like they are in the past. Maybe you have to look harder the older you get. I recently commented to a friend that a Nels Cline solo, live with Wilco, was the best guitar solo I’d ever heard and at that moment it truly was.”
The songs that make up Slow Gold lean towards dark, warm, and often reverb-drenched moods, blending desert blues with cinematic soundscapes. The music exists between abstract, dissonant textures and deeply melodic, harmony-rich compositions, creating a sound that is both haunting and immersive. With a deep understanding of musical harmony, Jacob continuously seeks to craft evocative, moody, and unexpected interpretations that elevate his music, often incorporating elements of film scores to enhance its atmospheric depth.
“I’m drawn to musicians and artists who have their own unique sonic worlds. Guitarists like Bill Frisell, Jim Campilongo and Ry Cooder to name a few important to me, are all uniquely themselves in the way they coax sound out of their instruments, and their approach to tone, harmony and song. Music at its best is the closest thing to magic I’ve experienced. I'm just searching for a sliver of that magic, here and there.
The musicians featured on Slow Gold all have a wonderful humanity I’m always searching for in music…...and life. I hear a subtlety, nuance and depth of feeling in their playing I’m drawn to. Luke Collins - Drums, Dan Marsh - Piano/Organ, Louis Gill - Bass, Tim Keegan - Bass, Matt Dixon - Pedal Steel and Jethro Pickett - Organ. I had never met the Piano/Organ player Dan Marsh before, but just saw him play live once. He was deep inside the music and I thought, yes he gets it. I have no real interest in playing solo guitar. For me, the blending of sounds and unique personalities is the main thing.”
Jacob’s influences extend beyond guitar heroes, and along with a love of exceptional instrumentalists like Larry Goldings and Jim Keltner, his deepest admiration is for artists like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Randy Newman, John Lennon, Lucinda Williams and Tom Waits who fuel his approach to sonics, melody, intent and mood.
“I grew up in the age of cassettes and loved the warmth and slight distortion and wooziness of an old tape. I remember sometimes being disappointed when later hearing the “correct” version on CD which sounded too clean to me. When I learned that the final version of Dylan’s Time out of Mind (I’m a huge Daniel Lanois fan of course), came from the cassette that Dylan been listening to as playback, I was intrigued. Jethro Pickett, a wonderful musician, engineer and producer I have been working with for years, happened to have just the right machine so we decided to bypass the usual mastering and instead mastered this album to cassette.”
Jacob’s music has a cinematic quality and is both evocative and expansive. One reviewer noted, “If this song were a film, it would be ‘Paris, Texas.’” Another wrote, “Cole introduces an enormous amount of space and depth, giving each song its own dimension, capable of living independently. It seems like film music, but in reality, it is cathartic and emotional blues.”
As one critic described, “It is reminiscent of the reconstructions and textures seen in Kelly Reichardt's films.” These comparisons capture the atmospheric, immersive, and emotionally evocative nature of his work, music that conjures imagery, longing, and vast landscapes.