Processing grief is the most difficult and subjective experience a mind can go through; each of us manage situations differently according to instinct, conditioning or denial.
For Jamie Cameron it seems that over the last decade his process has been a combination of all three. Shortly after modest success recording as When I Was A Little Girl whilst still a teenager he was involved in a car crash in which his best friend was fatally injured, a trauma from which up until The Nothing he’d been unable to make peace with.
That’s not to say that this is a record full of melodrama and incandescent, blasted emotions, far from it in fact. Cameron’s voice is slight, almost like it’s in another room, whilst frequently he uses instruments – banjo, a string section, backwashed piano – in austere fashion, breaking the silences only when it suits him.
I’ve struggled since The Nothing’s release to write something about it that hasn’t conveyed the impression of being an interloper witnessing therapy, or a wake; there are after all so many things which could’ve gone wrong, a rawness and vulnerability to the material which even when filtered to strangers could’ve overwhelmed the intent. And yet it’s real story is one of hope, of being at the other side, of truly knowing what you want. That perspective informs everything here – and probably makes Jamie Cameron a luckier man than he could explain.
The Voice Of Unreason 