4 out of 5

Label: Out on a Limb Records

Produced by: Chris Common

Cross-pollinating working man’s rock with punky gusto, Ireland’s Jogging’s sophomore release teams the trio up with notable hardcore / metal producer Chris Common to give their jangle some gut punch. It works.

‘Take Courage’ is a wonderful title: vocalists Ronan Jackson and Darren Craig trade throaty / shouty vocal lines as call-and-responses, circling around some pretty amusing (and powerful) puns that rev a listener up. But instead of going for more typical themes that might align with the album’s name – e.g. Be True to Yourself! – the lyrics often have a stop-and-think quality that really engages. So, yes, the sequence is that you’re called to action… to think. I love it. Part of that is due to the cyclical, pun-y nature of the lyrics themselves, which do plays on words and then switch those words around to get different meanings. It admittedly doesn’t always work, and the reliance on it means some lines are a stretch, but at the same time it is fun to sing along with, and conceptually makes it easier to kind of sit with and contemplate the words.

But before we get there, we’ve got riffs a’plenty pummeling us. Peter Lee’s fluid drumming keeps things shifting, such that even punkier sections have this kind of restlessness in the sense that we’re never locked in to a wholly predictable beat; at the same time, Ronan’s and Darren’s bass and guitar interplay are hook-laden, giving each song a nice range of textures: both catchy and elusive. Based on listening to Jogging’s other releases, it feels like this session with Common encourage the band to lean in to a somewhat guitar-forward, heavy sound, but their tendency to fall back to pop again gives us a balance of this feeling very aggressive but accessible and toe-tapping at the same time. It thus crosses back and forth into various types of rock, from GBV-like loose rumbling to Toadies’ riff-slinging, to Call Me Lightning bravado; when the group tries to collapse that back into a “standard” rock template with a guitar solo, the energy kinda dips, but they’re able to shift right back into the free-wheeling rollercoaster ride soon after, dip forgotten.

On either side of this album, Jogger has been more light-hearted, and then a bit more linear and raw. Take Courage hits a sweet spot that not only combines the two, but floats between them, and around them, backboned by sharp hooks and fun vocal callouts.