The side opens with “No Price on Earth”, a lesson in how to decline an argument. It gives us an ordinary day with no triumph and no disaster, and a refrain delivered with the shrug of a man who has given up haggling. A lesser writer would have reached for a flourish. Jeremy lets the plainness stand, and the song is stronger for it. The title is listed twice at the head of the sequence, and the repetition suits a record so fond of circling back to the thing it first said. It sets the terms for everything that follows: problems laid on the table, verdicts left to the listener. Jeremy has said he writes songs rather than standing for parliament because he knows his own frailties too well, and the whole side keeps to that modesty.<\/p>
\u201cI Don\u2019t Know\u201d is the love song as failed mathematical proof. The narrator tries to derive his wife from Fermat\u2019s margin, from primes and irrational constants, and gets nowhere before settling on a truth that needs no proving. Most love songs assert. This one reasons, flounders and surrenders, which is funnier and more affecting than a declaration would have been. It is the emotional ballast the side needs.<\/p>
The centrepiece is “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”, named for Keynes’s 1930 essay, which promised a fifteen-hour working week. Jeremy asks where the abundance went and answers with a line borrowed from the witches of *Macbeth*, on the theory that a spell was cast and we agreed to call it fate. The song never lectures. It shows a locked door and a room full of people eating, and the groove beneath is far too inviting for a protest song. Ray Davies would recognise the method, and so would the Billy Bragg of the quieter records.<\/p>
“How Much Is Enough?” is its natural companion, and it turns the same question inward, from a nation’s wealth to one man’s appetite. The arrangement is ornate without being fussy. Greed here is something the narrator examines in himself rather than a vice he finds in other people, which is the harder and more generous route.<\/span><\/p> “Market Square” then lowers the temperature to a working morning in a real English market, with nothing added and nothing explained. The restraint is quietly thrilling, and it recalls the Kinks’ gift for finding grandeur in the ordinary. Stallholders, weather and small talk are enough. A songwriter who trusts his material this much has earned the right to be believed.<\/span><\/p> The closer, “The Letter”, turns an unopened envelope into Schr\u00f6dinger’s cat, the news both good and bad until somebody slits the flap. Anyone who has left a brown envelope on the hall table for a week will wince in recognition. It is also a neat piece of sequencing: after a side of big questions about money and fairness, the final word goes to the smallest and most domestic dread of all.<\/span><\/p> Sonically, everything grows from an acoustic guitar and a voice, and those roots stay audible after the drums, bass and discreet MIDI arrive. The rhythm sections were built with AI assistance, but the finished tracks, none much beyond three and a half minutes, sound like songs first and processes a distant second. Folk, soul, indie and post-punk drift through the arrangements, yet the lyric never gives up the centre of the frame. These are tracks for the quiet playlist, the long walk, and the third or fourth listen, when the references underneath finally click into place.<\/span><\/p> Side Three is modest in manner and ambitious in reach. It trusts its audience, which is rarer than a good chorus. The Well Worn Path is worth the walk, and Jeremy’s partner might consider taking her time getting ready for the next stretch.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\nhttps:\/\/musicbyjeremy.com\/<\/a>\n\n\n\n\n
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