Album Review – Jack Blocker’s “The Land On Most High”

Classic Country (#510.1) on the Country DDS.

Treating songs like poetic travelogues, and then gracing them with tasteful treatments steeped in the country & Western legacy until they come out of the oven golden brown and tasty, Texas native Jack Blocker demands your attention with his debut album The Land On Most High. Little patience or persuasion is necessary to find yourself on the agreeable side of what’s going on here. You push play, and crack a smile.

The country music world is not bereft for up-and-coming buckaroos singing their guts out. Some guy who you’d never heard of five minutes ago has 2 million TikTok followers, and Spotify singles with over 70 million spins, even though he sounds like a bad version of Zach Bryan. Somebody recommends them to you, and then you’re left staring at a profile picture, wondering if the mustache and cowboy hat is authentic or ironic.

With Jack Blocker, you feel safe. You’re in for the long haul, because you can tell he is too. This is a country music investment to get on the ground floor with and ride the tide. Jack’s voice is attuned to accentuating the emotion of a lyric and following a melody, while the music is pleasantly understated and sumptuous, though present and full-bodied all the same.

Produced by Patrick Lyons who made his name cutting records with Colter Wall, the sound of Jack Blocker is classic, traditional, and a little bit Western at times, which is good because geography plays such an important role in these songs.

From singing the virtues of The Natural State in a song that could almost be bluegrass in its acoustical rendering in “If Heaven Looks Like Arkansas,” to “Saguaro” about the Arizona cactus that look like stick figures, to back home in the album’s final song “Lonestar,” Jack Blocker takes you places in his tunes, and you’re a willing passenger.

“[This] is a collection of nostalgic daydreams,” says Blocker. “It’s a picture that’s painted using hundreds of little memories and moments—the driveway basketball games, motel naps, homemade slip ‘n slides, and trailside snacks that seemed insignificant at the time but continually creep back around to scratch my brain. My hope is that the deeper I dive into my own memories through these songs, the more vividly each person listening will imagine theirs.”

There are perhaps easier and more lucrative paths forward in music and entertainment, and in country music specifically compared to the one Jack Blocker has chosen. But he’s intentionally looking to folks like fellow Texans Townes Van Zandt, Kris Kristofferson, and Guy Clark for inspiration. He just also happens to be a better singer, and coming along at a time when thirsty listeners are seeking more honest voices.

The Land On Most High is just the start. And from the super twangy opening song “Worth His Salt,” Jack Blocker immediately has you hooked. And with these artists who have more time on this earth ahead than behind, it’s hard to not get excited by what the future holds when the present sounds so promising.

8.2/10

Purchase/Listen to The Land On Most High