The Bones of J.R. Jones

Growing up, Jonathon Linaberry was obsessed with the radio.

 

“I remember sitting there at night, glued to the boombox, cassette player ready to record whenever my favorite songs came on,” he recalls. “There was something so thrilling about it, something romantic that I think we’ve lost now that everything’s available at our fingertips. I wanted to find a way to get back to that place, to recapture those feelings of excitement and anticipation and possibility.”

 

Linaberry does precisely that on Radio Waves, his sixth studio album as The Bones Of J.R. Jones. Recorded in Toronto with producer Robbie Lackritz (Feist, Bahamas), the collection is moody and hypnotic, steeped in the sonic landscape of the ’80s and ’90s as it excavates the past with equal parts nostalgia and curiosity. The arrangements are utterly entrancing here, built on the tension between acoustic instruments and retro synthesizers, and Linaberry’s performances are raw and visceral, at times aching in their vulnerability. Put it all together and you’ve got a poignant exploration of memory and longing delivered by a relentless searcher, a revelatory work of personal reflection steeped in the endless beauty, pain, and chaos of youth.

 

“I’ve never really resonated with the idea of ‘the good old days,’” Linaberry reflects. “Your understanding of the past and your relationship with it change as you get older, and I’ve always been more interested in the evolution of those feelings than in wearing any kind of rosecolored glasses.” 

 

Born and raised in central New York, Linaberry got his start playing in hardcore and punk bands before becoming enamored with the field recordings of Alan Lomax, who documented rural American blues, folk, and gospel musicians throughout the 1930s and ’40s. Inspired by the unvarnished honesty of those vintage performances, Linaberry launched The Bones of J.R. Jones in 2012 and, operating as a fully independent artist, began releasing a series of critically acclaimed albums and EPs.

 

“Our lives are an endless series of revolving doors,” Linaberry reflects. “Even the smallest decisions can change our entire trajectory. What kind of arrogant fool doesn’t look back and wonder?”

 

That sense of lostness, of uncertainty as to who we are and where we belong turns up throughout the record. The blistering “Drive” devours itself from the inside out in the tedious solitude of the road; “The Devil” grapples with identity, intimacy, and dependence; and the breezy “Catching You” wonders what we were ever trying to prove with all the debaucherous nights and bad decisions of youth.

 

“I think so many of us live in the past because it’s easier to face than the future,” Linaberry explains. “But I’m not interested in going back. I’m interested in understanding the feelings and experiences that made us who we are: the passion and the hunger, the faults and the failures, the hopes and the fears.

 

Truth be told, those feelings never really go away. They’re all still out there, floating in the ether, drifting through eternity on an endless sea of radio waves. All you have to do is tune in