Reading the lyrics to Western Jaguar’s song “The Grand Parade” in isolation from the music feels like spying on someone’s private diary entry, but married to the song’s rock-leaning melody, “The Grand Parade” becomes a personal conversation between two intimates: the speaker and the listener. While “The Grand Parade” addresses one of the key players in the song’s drama in the second person (“You made a mess of man out of me / Oh, when you walked away”) there’s an unspoken understanding between Western Jaguar and us, their audience, that we are a surrogate for the person who’s done the abandoning.
“The Grand Parade” is off a new collection of songs called Memorial, each song title seeming to reference a place or event in Western Jaguar’s past that’s left an indelible mark on their memory. Without any explicit instruction or information suggesting as much, you know that “The Grand Parade” is a postcard from the past, the kind that turns up from time to time as you shuffle through drawers or sort out stacks of mail moved from one spot to another. It’s a relic that triggers a flood of emotions, the kind which are best worked out in the open, verbalized and shared with others. There’s a deep vein of pain and sorrow at the core of “The Grand Parade”, but Western Jaguar manages to make thoughtful art out of their past.
