The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project follows 2009's acclaimed We Are Only Riders collection with a second volume of the late Gun Club leader's previously-unreleased works-in-progress, brought to life by old friends, collaborators and acolytes.
Many songs started as nascent ideas captured on a cassette unearthed by Pierce's latter day collaborator Cypress Grove while clearing out his loft. Harking back to the collective ethos of Pierce's beloved jazz, artists spill into each other's tracks, reinterpreting or finishing lyrical and melodic sketches while some chose personal favorites from his catalog. This time, the Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project includes Nick Cave (who also takes part in a return duet with Debbie Harry on “The Breaking Hands”), Mick Harvey, Debbie Harry & Chris Stein, Lydia Lunch, The Jim Jones Revue, Kid Congo Powers, Tav Falco's Panther Burns, Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell, Vertical Smile, Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate), Warren Ellis, Barry Adamson, Bertrand Cantat & Pascal Humbert, Thalia Zedek & Chris Brokaw, Hugo Race, Dom Beken and Kris & Michelle Needs, sometimes in different combinations.
“This is not a tribute project, which usually consists of third rate re-treads of an artist's most famous work, but brand-new material from beyond the grave. In some cases the artists have had to finish the songs, so there can be no nonsense about this not being as good as the original version, as these are the original versions! It's a musical collective of artists who have come together to interpret or complete skeletal, unfinished material by Jeffrey. Where possible we have used Jeffrey's contributions, so he actually appears posthumously on this album.” Pierce and his ever-changing Gun Club line-ups poured America's roots music forms into a blender of hard drugs and liquor, wrenching the udders of America's bloated cow to spew out toxic, low-life hollers and swamped-up songs of love and desperation. He seemed to have located the dark main artery of the blues, loaded up an overblown hypo and set the plunger to permanent stun. Includes a 20-page booklet featuring memorabilia and extensive liner notes by Kris Needs.