Jack R Reilly Bares His Bones on Old Guard

I plugged my data into an app this morning. It told me my most listened to song over the last six weeks had been Jack R. Reilly’s ‘Old Guard’. I didn’t need an app to tell me this, but it was still a warm feeling to know such a delicate and open song had clearly effected me in such a way.

Over countless listens to the Sydney songwriter’s latest single of introspection, shame, regret and longing, I have been forced to my own place of self reflection. As a song, Old Guard is stripped so bare that it forces you to come face to face with it, to feel it and feel moved by it. It’s a piece of art that is hard to walk away from.

Surfacing topics of body image, masculinity, actions of intoxication and inaction in the face of a desire to change. Old Guard asks whether we can move forward knowing our faults or if we will always be what we are, meeting ourselves in the unfaultering old guard of personal faults that encompasses the complexity of being. It is a remarkably self aware song that allows you to fall into it entirely.

Musically the song reflects upon its themes. Stark and honest. An electric guitar strummed alone, a reserved vocal, the odd production flourish, a subtle harmony and finally the introduction of piano. The song has nowhere to hide in its simplicity, but on the same measure it needs nothing more than what it does posses to completely break you. Achingly beautiful and more full than the bones it displays may suggest.

Unsurprisingly, Jack R Reilly has produced yet another stunningly beautiful song in Old Guard.