‘Feels Like Fiction’ feels like the work of a seasoned artist. Yet this is Chloe Jones’ debut album. The Manchester-based singer-songwriter may have made waves with her EP ‘A Shore to Circle Back to’ but this latest record finds her crashing firmly onto the country music scene. Blending a mix of genres to rework literary narratives, she succeeds in transposing stories into lyrics before matching them with their appropriate sounds.
Having travelled extensively around America, the album opens with a nod to one particular stop in the form of ‘Old Orchard Beach’. The town in Maine provides the setting for what is akin to an old wives’ tale. Except this one turns out to be true. The haunting soundscape perfectly matches the Atlantic coast setting, with an eeriness that threads into ‘A Girl Called Indigo’. There is something about the Folk-based narrative upon a dark Americana underlay and carpeted with Blues that creates a magical, mystical atmosphere. Well suited to the hope and dream of a mother-daughter relationship that shares a love of literature:
“wind[ing] up in fantastical scenes / full of fairies, trials, wizards, bears and ghosts”.
As the album progresses, the novels with which Chloe is well-accustomed feature. ‘Dragonfly in Amber’ captures brilliantly a Scottish landscape in its soaring cello and fervent drumbeats. ‘The White Witch of Rosehall’, with its elongated strings and immersive percussion, transports the listener into the world of Annie Palmer and her Montego Bay homestead. And ‘Frankenstein’ communicates a retro-Gothic feel with an electronic edge that borders on the phantasmagorical. Each song is like a window into the collaborative nature of adaptation, as Chloe Jones’ love of the source material is honoured in her careful interpretation. Nevertheless, they feel fresh in her musical hands.
It is the diversity of her music that is as intriguing as these retellings. Unafraid to dabble in jazz (‘Something Wicked’) and include a piano-led ballad (‘Last Flight’), Jones is not boxed in by preconception. Elles Bailey and Kezia Gill come to mind when one considers the generic breadth on offer here. A spectrum which stretches, at the last, to old-time country. The crackling of a record player at the start and end of the title track is well-suited not only to an album closer but as a personal reflection. The literary inspirations of earlier now becoming an altogether more real experience as she “blur[s] the fine line of reality”. It is a beautiful moment of vulnerability. A fitting end, one might say, to the album’s story. A record which, I think, is one of the best to come from the British Country Music scene this year.
You can listen to Chloe’s debut album on your preferred streaming platform, or support her as an independent artist by purchasing it here. She is going on a bookshop tour in November 2026, tickets for which can be found here.
Featured Image (C) Chloe Jones Music
