After a busy year of live shows ‘from festivals to sell-out tours’, Jamie Webster returned to the studio for his third solo album ‘10 For The People’, which is arguably his best one yet.
Webster’s past two albums solidified his sound: strummed acoustic guitar and a thick Scouse accent with lyrics focused on the working class and liberation. Fans would naturally question the progression of Webster’s music after two similar-sounding albums. Thankfully, ‘10 For The People’ builds on this with great success, both musically and lyrically.
Merseyside-born Webster is known for singing about his passions, rising through the ranks through his connection to Liverpool Football Club, performing terrace chants at Boss Night events and most successfully, performing in Madrid to thousands of travelling Reds before their Champions League victory in 2019. However, in 2023, Webster announced that he had cut ties with the football club to focus on his solo career. It is Webster’s passion and drive for a better society that elevates his music and allows for such a unique connection to his live crowds.
With the release of the first single to be on the album ‘Voice of the Voiceless’, fans could expect another album featuring liberating and socialist lyrics above a band prominently featuring his acoustic guitar palm-muting open chords. Webster’s underdog anthems are certainly present on TFTP, with ‘Something to Eat’, ‘Fickle Fran’ and ‘Sing Your Tears’ encapsulating the recipes from Webster’s second LP ‘Moments’ (2022).
Yet it is the musical variety of TFTP that has set this album apart from the rest, with the gentle piano and string descending chord progressions reminiscent of some of McCartney’s solo work in ‘Dolly Bird’, and the subtle brushwork on the snare in ‘Lovers in the Supermarket’ that are among several features of the album that are new to Webster’s work. The refreshing brass sections and cheery, inspiring progressions only contribute positively to Webster’s socialist mantra. Scottish indie singer Brooke Combe features on the opening track of the album ‘Better Day’, in which Webster truly solidifies his sound with the antiphonal phrasing between Webster’s raw vocals and the lead guitar. There are also hints of nostalgia and impostor syndrome in Webster’s lyrics: ‘I find old videos of when I played the local bars … believe me I was never sure I’d get this far’. Webster’s egalitarian wishes are thematic through the idea of ‘the people’ throughout the album, as the piano ballad ‘Dolly Bird’ resumes the emotive rhetoric of upper-class ignorance towards ‘the people’.
As well as hopes of a better future on a large scale, Webster integrates micro heart-warming stories of today. ‘Lovers in a Supermarket’ provides a juxtaposition of the idealistic major seventh chords with the very real and precious compassion shared between two ‘old lovers’. The introduction of an uplifting brass section is something to get used to for Webster fanatics, as this features in ‘Better Day’, ‘Dolly Bird’, but it is the pre-released track ‘Looking Good’ that is the stand-out on the LP. The positive lyrics encouraging self-love and normalising difference with a catchy brass line above the bouncy major chords would give listeners no choice but to feel good. A cracking tenor saxophone solo is the climax of the album, as doubters of Webster’s musical substance are surely deterred at this point.
However, sceptics might consider the occasional crass and cliché nature of Webster’s lyrics and melodies. While the music behind ‘The Boy (Chapter 1)’ is hauntingly elegant with chromatic chords reminiscent of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’, the cheap monotone vocalising of ‘la-la-la’s and his rhyming of the word ‘song’ with the word ‘song’ lets down an otherwise convincing track. ‘The Girl (Chapter 2)’ has an opening melody line equivalent to Michael Jackson’s ‘Billy Jean’, and it is the occasional unoriginality behind the vocal parts that leave this album with something to be desired.
To redeem itself, the final track of the album ‘How Do You Sleep At Night’ is alarmingly relevant. Its inclusion on the record was an unexpected one, becoming the eleventh song (and thus making the album’s title inaccurate) due to Webster’s dismay at the horrific warfare that arose in early October. The song remains politically neutral and holds a pacifist viewpoint, condemning the devastating violence in the world, with the reflective and minimalistic fingerstyle acoustic guitar reminiscent of ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ from Webster’s debut LP ‘We Get By’ (2020).
‘10 For The People’ is undoubtedly a refreshing listen, featuring peaks and troughs of emotion through the inclusion of explorational orchestral instruments within Webster’s new-found sound while maintaining Webster’s socialist mantra. The quality of the production is easily the highest of any of Webster’s previous efforts, and the thought that goes into each track convincingly shows that Jamie Webster’s music truly is ‘for the people’.
Words by Solly Temkin