Fast-rising ‘people’s poet’, singer-songwriter, Jamie Webster delivers a timely love song to the city he loves, crystalizing in song the pull of ‘home’ wherever the listener might be, on the emotionally-charged, This Place – OUT NOW on Modern Sky. Another peak in Webster’s expedition from hard-slogging, ex-electrician to the voice singing a generation’s loves, losses, hopes and dreams, the single offers lyrical payback for the faith of the thousands now supporting his every move.
The place in question is Webster’s home city of Liverpool, but rows of buildings by the Mersey mean little without good people. This Place’s blood-rushing, closing refrain of ‘my city, my people, my heart’ pulls everyone and everything together in ecstatic harmony to celebrate good neighbours and electric street life. Written purposely to bring pride in each other bubbling to the surface, whenever This Place has been unleashed at any one of Webster’s sold out live shows, anywhere in the UK, the response has been the same – nobody is left to dance on their own.
Recorded at Parr Street Studios and produced by Rich Turvey (Blossoms, Courteeners, She Drew The Gun), the studio version of This Place marries Webster’s original, anthemic-acoustic vision to gently popping electronics, with the singer’s vocal performance perhaps the most assured, and delicately impassioned of his releases to date. Influenced by rabble-rousing, socially-in-tune songwriters like Shack’s Mick Head, The La’s and Echo and The Bunnymen, This Place puts into words life in Britain’s communities, held together by humour, tragedy and faith that tomorrow might be better than today.
Listed by the Liverpool Echo journalists as the 11th most influential person shaping the city’s modern culture in their 2020 Power List, Webster is emerging as a voice of his generation.
Completed by a full band, Webster now counts as comrades Lightning Seeds members Jim Sharrock (drums) and Tim Cunningham (bass) alongside Danny Murphy (guitars), who also backs Mick Head as a member of his Red Elastic Band.
