Constant Smiles are comfortable with discomfort

Delighting at the wall of compact discs on display behind me, he starts rummaging in his car to show off the collection he’s relocated there: a wonderfully eclectic combination of Leonard Cohen, Psychic TV, Curtis Mayfield, and Boris – to name a few, which Jones enthuses about in his disarmingly chipper manner. This little interaction feels like a microcosm for what the Constant Smiles project is all about: warm, giving, and wearing a stoically sunny disposition in less-than-ideal circumstances. This is art that is comfortable in its own sense of discomfort.

In Moonflowers, Constant Smiles – a collective featuring a revolving door of ten or more musicians – have made a subtle, masterful album of guitar pop. Constant Smiles take Wilco-ish country pop and juxtapose it with the rich, dense instrumentation of a project like Broken Social Scene to create something that feels timeless and emotionally incisive. Jones’ almost painfully direct lyrics deal succinctly with internal and interpersonal struggle and finding one’s place in the world. There is no space for melodrama here, though, irrespective of the songs’ thematic heaviness. The delivery of the material is calm, stolid, and remarkably grounded, and Jones admits that the process of making this record improved his sense of self-assuredness.

Growing up, Jones idolised Bob Dylan and Nick Drake, artists who he says “inhabited their own universes pretty singularly and had their own interesting voices,” as he tells me. But that kind of creation felt a long way off: “I didn’t have the confidence back then, and I haven’t had the confidence to make the record I really wanted to make. I think a lot of this record is about feeling comfortable with myself as a singer, and my voice and perspective.” It's the record he’s wanted to make his whole life.

Moonflowers certainly represents an oasis of calm and stability in the context of Constant Smiles’ comparative creative restlessness and oscillation between styles. Accumulating an enviable and varied catalogue over the years, Jones seems to view Moonflowers as a result of his being able to focus his MO to the point where the membrane between the art and the artist becomes almost invisible.

“Moonflowers is really all about the subconscious work,” he says. “There’s always room for improvement in life and you’re always learning and you’re always changing. We’ve been a band for a long time now. You work on something every day without really looking at the big picture! It felt like this record was a result of working on this craft for so long that the subconscious work has come to the fore.”

Jones’ relationship with his work is something to be celebrated. He reflects on his diligence – aiming to write a song once a week – with refreshing clarity, comparing it to meditation and exercise. “It’s just something that grounds me!” he laughs. “It has always been something that has helped me to process the world around me. We’ve all got these things we’ve got to do… I gotta eat every day, I’ve got to exercise, meditate, and make music so that I don’t get grouchy! Irrespective of material conditions, I’d be doing it. Everyone has got their things that they need to do.”

Jones also points to the arrival of drummer Nora Knight in 2022 as a profound stabilising force in the collective’s current context, musical and otherwise. “Nora is absolutely one of my favourite people and I am grateful to have found a great collaborator in her – we could bounce ideas off each other so naturally,” he says. “Nora really helped me focus ideas, and also help me take ideas into other directions I wasn’t expecting. Obviously, this has been such a collaborative band for so long, but you can still get stuck in habits. Nora has contributed a really beautiful song [‘Harriman’] to the record. I’m really proud of it, and really proud of her. We’ve been playing that song live for a while and it’s become something of a fan favourite. I think it adds a really good new dynamic to the band.”

Being able to sit and percolate ideas is another aspect of the practice that Jones attributes to his proudest creative achievement: “We went on tour for so long – Nora, Spike [Currier, long-time bass player], and I. We were writing a lot in transit and in soundcheck. We’d work a lot of things out on stage. It was natural but it wasn’t rushed: we really took our time with it, although at the same time overthinking isn’t an issue for me because I work really fast. I think I’m pretty good at executing an idea and that’s that. I’m certainly not a perfectionist, and I probably subscribe to the Albini idea that if we need to tweak things a lot in the recording or the production then maybe the song isn’t really very good in the first place!”

Jones speaks of his bandmates and collaborators with genuine warmth and affection, and one can easily see that love and trust are foundational tenants of the existence of the band. He talks about the people who have been “in and around the band for so long” – long-standing collaborators and friends Chris Liberato and Mike Mackie – as providing invaluable contributions to the creative process.

“They are really good at telling me what is good and what isn’t, and I trust them,” Jones says. “I don’t second guess too much.” He talks about these vulnerable processes with a real breeziness, which is reflected in his art: so much of the record is about acceptance and “meeting life on its own terms,” to use Jones’ words. When I speak about ambitions for the record, they are all centred around Jones’ relationships and practice.

“The way those relationships deepen over time, like the subconscious practice, you’re deepening your relationship with yourself, which in turn can deepen your relationship with other people,” he explains. “You’re doing things to improve and then that deepens your friendships and the richness of life. It’s a form of self-care, and it blooms in so many beautiful ways.”

It’s easy to view Moonflowers as a document of this process – a soft, gorgeous record that refracts conflict and struggle through a prism of calm acceptance, a lifetime’s worth of cultivation and refinement delivered with conversational nonchalance. I end the call with Jones still in his car waiting for the terminally evasive street sweeper: laughing, pontificating, and fizzing with ideas. A man as emotionally generous as the music he makes.