Press/Reviews

Jenifer Jackson at Banjo Jim's, NYC 1/21/10

Back from a trip to Austin, Jenifer Jackson's got a band together again: Greg Wieczorek on drums and Jason Mercer on a gorgeous Danelectro SG copy bass. A couple of songs into the set, beaming, she announces that she's rediscovered that she actually likes music. She should, with this band. Her songs are pretty and haunting when she plays them solo; with a rhythm section behind her, they are transcendent. She's a pretty intense guitarist, and this comes across especially on the Ticket to Ride-inflected Down So Low as she wails on the downstrokes, on the beat. The band has re-energized her.

But this is Mercer's night. Choice, tasteful pieces of broken chords on the slower, country-flavored ballads; slinky slides and bends on the more rocking songs, and every now and then he winds up a crescendo with few sweetly, quietly boomy chords. It's a clinic in how to play bass and it's free.

Boo Reiners from Demolition String Band gets cajoled into playing Telecaster on a handful of numbers and the effect is the same. He knows every country lick in the book, but instead he goes counterintuitive with bends and passing tones and immediately the songs go to the next level, and it's effortless, or at least it looks that way.

The songs, as they always do, run the gamut — the joyous white soul jangleforest of Suddenly Unexpectedly; the practically noir, nocturnal pop of Maybe; a new country song that would elevate Carrie Underwood's game to the big leagues if she or someone like her could find it and cover it; and a couple of big, hooky, upbeat rockers to close the set. The unrestrained joy shining in Jackson's voice makes the contrast even more striking when she turns down the lights. Suddenly it doesn't matter that it's cold outside and that there's a long train ride lurking ahead. In a word, transcendence.

Jenifer Jackson at Rockwood Music Hall, NYC 11/19/09

It's a fine line in the music blogosphere -- nobody wants to come off as a cheerleader for a particular artist or band, yet there are some acts who inarguably deserve a lot of attention. Jenifer Jackson is no stranger to regular readers here. But even by her rigorous standards, her show at the Rockwood on the nineteenth was transcendent, the best one she's done -- in New York at least -- in a long time. And there have been some good ones in between, just to go the music index above and you will see plenty. Is this overkill? Not if you consider how the much ink the Village Voice gave the Ramones in the summer of 1977, or how much press Coltrane got back in the 50s. That's not an overstatement. Jackson and her bandmates pianist Matt Kanelos (who leads a fine Americana-rock band of his own) and drummer Billy Doughty gave a clinic in tersely, wrenchingly beautiful songcraft, Jackson'svocals gentle but with the steely resolve that underscores the intensity of the emotion in everything she writes.

Kanelos gave notice that he was in particularly bluesy, soulful mode right from the start, beginnining with the psychedelic ballad The War Is Done, from Jackson's 2001 Birds cd. Good Times Roll (her original, not the B.B.King standard) was hypnotic, even mesmerizing, Kanelos playfully working a glockenspiel in tandem with his lefthand rhythm. The understated frustration anthem Words got a particularly propulsive treatment; by contrast, the hopeful ballad Spring (yet another unreleased gem) was lush and sultry, Doughty playing the lead line on melodica.

The angst-driven existentialist anthem Maybe, pondering the point at which it might make sense to let hope -- of whatever kind -- fall by the wayside was driven and insistent, part post-Carole King riffage, part sprightly post-Bacharach pop, part countrypolitan. Wherever the song led, the dark undercurrent beneath the catchy, glistening pop surface was always there.

Her most countrypolitan ballad, After the Fall (also from Birds) got the benefit of an absolutely psychedelic, hypnotic, percussive jam out. She wrapped up the set with two new ones -- a chorus-driven, Mary Lee's Corvette-style Americana pop hit, another that matched early 70s radio pop to a sweaty Philly soul groove, and a particularly wistful, gently lovely take on the unreleased 6/8 ballad The Beauty in the Emptying, whose title pretty much speaks for itself. Doughty again took the lead on melodica, enhancing its gentle resilience. Wow. What a show. You'll see this on our Best NYC Concerts of 2009 list in about a month.

The Rockwood has been Jackson's home for awhile but now that she's back, who knows where she'll be next -- watch this space for upcoming dates.

Jenifer Jackson at Rockwood Music Hall, NYC 10/11/09

Jenifer Jackson is back. Not that she ever stopped playing or writing songs — the good news is that her self-imposed exile in Austin is over and she's returned to Gotham. Sunday evening's set mixed quiet triumph with some aptly chosen late-summer mood pieces along with some of the tremendously impactful new songs she's been working up over the last few months. If you haven't seen Jackson in awhile and you think you know her, the answer is that you really don't — whether she's working harmonies off the melodies of audience favorites like Summer's Over or End of August, or emphasizing the tropical feel (or the rock feel) of an older number, she's grown to the point where it's always a crapshoot where she'll end up. The only given is that it'll be a good place.

As much a triumphant homecoming as this may have been, pianist Matt Kanelos underscored everything with a gritty chordal tension, completely in sync with the restlessness, unease and occasional outright angst of Jackson's songwriting. His gentle honkytonk work on the rather sweet country ballad The Beauty in the Emptying (on Jackson's forthcoming album) contrasted with the clenched-teeth insistence of the somewhat ironically titled Let the Times Roll (another unreleased, hypnotic gem), the ominously minimalist Groundward and the menacing Blair Witch imagery of Maybe, which was definitely the most intense song of the set.

To end the show, Jackson put down her guitar and over Kanelos' crisp and incisive chords, put her own spin on I Say a Little Prayer for You. She may have learned it from the very first album she ever owned, Aretha Now — "For the longest time I thought that was her name," Jackson revealed — but her interpretation was a whole lot more bossa than brass and played up its nuances for all they were worth. She's back at the Rockwood in November and you ought to see her there.

Jenifer Jackson and Juliana Nash at Rockwood Music Hall, NYC 3/10/09

A welcome return appearance by two very different, very conspicuously absent songwriting sirens. Jenifer Jackson has gotten a lot of ink here, justifiably: she's simply one of the finest songwriters on the planet, someone who leaps effortlessly across boundaries, intermingling styles with a seemingly intuitive melodicism. Mixing old favorites with songs from a new cd which is three-quarters done, she said, she delivered a typically captivating set, playing her first three songs solo on guitar.

She opened with an unreleased, fetchingly catchy Americana pop number, In Spring: "Time goes fast, living in the past, maybe love will come again in spring," she sang in her signature warm, wistful voice. On both of the next two songs, We Will Be Together and Whole Wide World, she waited til the last chorus and then improvised her way up the scale with not a little imploring and anguish and this was intense to say the least.

Pianist Matt Kanelos then joined her on another new one, Words, a dark existentialist lament that transcends its pretty melody, contributing an aptly darkly glistening solo, Debussy meets Gershwin, when the time came. Jackson sang it impatiently: "Words, get out of my way, tripping me where I go — talk about the moment that is here!" The textural interplay between Kanelos' sharp piano and Jackson's warmly crescendoing fingerpicking was absolutely gorgeous in the relatively new, 6/8 ballad The Beauty in the Emptying.

The best songs of the set were dark, pensive new ones. "Yesterday the motion had no meaning, yesterday the seasons were careening," she related in the first, Groundward, ending up on a predictably brooding note: "Summer rain is falling." The second, Maybe, was absolutely haunting, noir Bacharach-style bossa nova pop with a theme of restlessness, a recurrent topic in Jackson's work. "Maybe this is as much sense as life will ever make," she sang, half cynical and half resigned, Kanelos adding a brilliant, eerie chordal solo followed by Jackson's la-la-la outro, ending unexpectedly and ominously with a minor-key flourish. The two encored with a hasty, happy-go-lucky cover of the old Delfonics' doo-wop hit La La Means I Love You.

Juliana Nash is fondly remembered around these parts as the architect of the Pete's Candy Store sound, and a den mom of sorts to scores of excellent New York acoustic bands who called the little Brooklyn bar home from the mid-90s to the early zeros. This was a striking reminder of how fun her own shows at her old home base used to be. A petite woman with a matter-of-fact, deadpan wit and a big, powerful soul voice, she told the crowd that this was her first-ever show featuring just guitar and piano (Kanelos back behind the keys again, unrehearsed but gamely following Nash's smartly intiutive, catchy changes). Fighting off the rust (she hasn't had many shows here in town recently), she held a lot in reserve tonight until the end of the show, working her way through a mix of pleasantly familiar, pensive, sometimes countryish pop songs. Like Jackson, she has an ear for a hook and an eye for a striking lyrical image: "Love's a champion battleship, you need an ocean of tears to float it," she lamented on the the blue-eyed soul ballad Love Is Heavy that opened the show. Another thoughtful ballad, Maybe Street, looked at life sardonically and metaphorically through the eyes of sisters named Hope and Joy. She used the pensive Built for Longing as an exercise in subtle shading rather than turning it into a big tour de force like she usually does.

She related a story of how she and Jackson many years ago celebrated a birthday by shoplifting a couple of tiaras out of a 99-cent store because they were too broke to afford them. And then launched into a hilarious and absolutely spot-on, somewhat Lou Reed-inflected riff-rock homage to the wee hours in New York: "It's six AM and I'm drunk again, I turn incidents to habits," she wailed gleefully. For anyone who'd ever walked home from the L at 14th St. after closing Pete's, watching the newspaper trucks make their rounds, this hit the spot sweetly. She wrapped up the show with the passionate yet wary rocker Tiny Belladonna (written about her daughter), a darkly beautiful, elegaic number where she cautioned that "It's ok not to be everything we thought we would be when we were young," and another soul-inflected ballad, Everlasting Ache where she paced herself until the end before finally cutting loose with that voice of hers. And then encored with the tongue-in-cheek Rocks in Your Head, something she'd pulled fortuitously from the archives. Jenifer Jackson is back at the Rockwood on Mar 24 at 8; watch this space for Juliana Nash sightings.

Jenifer Jackson at Rockwood Music Hall, NYC 10/14/08

We've covered several of Jenifer Jackson's shows here before: in case you remember them, this one was characteristically good, yet different (see our index for the full list of 'em). Moving to Austin seems to have been the right decision for her: she's always been a captivating performer, but she seems more carefree now onstage and that ironically gives her the opportunity to really let loose the darkness in her songs. Not everything she does is dark: she loves tropicalia and bossa nova and consequently much of her ever-growing repertoire is sunny and summery, but there's also a substantial portion that's stormy, or pensive, or downright white-knuckle intense. Last night's show was a mix of everything. Lots of new material. She made it a point of prefacing one of the unrecorded numbers: "I don't ordinarily tell what a song is about. I let the audience figure it out," she explained in characteristically inscrutable fashion, then played a very pretty, plaintive 6/8 number, The Beauty in the Emptying. It could mark the end of an affair, but as she'd explained, it was actually about clearing out all the junk at her old East Village apartment before the move.

High point of the night: "Here's an old one," she laughed, launching into the somewhat hypnotic, 6/8, countryish ballad After the Fall, from her 2002 cd Birds:

Love is an ocean
Love is a stone
Love is a wish that
You make on your own
If all of these ghosts would just
Leave me alone
I know that I would be free

She'd brought along her main man Billy Doughty, who played drums smartly and tersely on a single floor tom before switching to piano on one song. Then she brought up Matt Kanelos — who hadn't played with her in a few years - to take over the keys. He played as well as Doughty had, with an equally pointed incisiveness. Their first song together was another new one, Let the Good Times Roll (NOT the old blues standard), an apprehensive, backbeat-driven anthem set off by a tasty descending series of chords. "The sign says, baby, let the good times roll," Jackson sang, but it was with one eye looking over her shoulder: disappointment could be just around the corner. Then she changed things up with the blithe, upbeat ballad In Spring, the first of several that Kanelos had never played with the band and he absolutely nailed it. But that song is pretty intuitive: the next one, Breathe, wasn't, but he nailed that one too, choosing his spots amidst the nooks and crannies of Jackson's expansive guitar chords.

While she was in New York, Jackson maintained a busy schedule, playing several times a month, ironically making it easy to take her for granted. Now that she's gone, every time she comes back is a special occasion. Moral of the story: don't miss your favorite performers, they too may be gone before you know it. No telling when Jackson's back in town (she's made it back every few months since leaving); Kanelos plays a set of his own stuff at the Rockwood on Nov 7 at 7 PM.

Jenifer Jackson at Rockwood Music Hall, NYC 7/20/08

What a treat to see such a major artist, a Lennon/McCartney/Elvis Costello-class songwriter, in such an intimate, sonically beautiful setting. This was the fun set. Jackson's an urban person at heart, and tonight she might as well have been wearing one of those "I heart New York" shirts. Although Jackson relocated to Austin last year, she and her cohorts onstage — Elysian Fields guitarist Oren Bloedow and her longtime drummer Greg Wiz — were just about jumping out of their shoes, unabashedly delighted to be playing with each other again after a long hiatus. Which was particularly striking, because her stock in trade is lush, jazz and tropicalia-inflected songs with a pensive, moody edge. But tonight was just as much a clinic in good times as good songwriting, featuring mostly new material.

The drummer was playing all the new stuff cold, but nobody would have known it if Jackson hadn't spilled the beans: his feel for her songs is absolutely intuitive. Bloedow played invigoratingly virtuosic, fast bluegrass-inflected lines all night, a striking change from the jazzy noir feel of his own band. "It's hard to play chicken-scratch sitting down," Jackson marveled, but it seemed as if Bloedow would have gladly done it behind his back, and well, if anybody had asked him to. The new stuff is sensationally tuneful and emotionally impactful: since her first full-length album, 1999's Slowly Bright, Jackson hasn't lost a step. Vocally, her range has expanded, in both senses of the word: she has the voice of a survivor, indomitable, confident, despite a few dents probably too deep to ever be completely smoothed out. There's solace in that voice, but there's also a bon vivant who refuses to miss out on anything good. The night's best song, a new number, reflected exactly that. Building on a dark, steady, deliberate descending progression to a passionate crescendo, Jackson sang of letting it all go, defiantly refusing to accede to despair.

Another number had something of a sassy 60s Nancy Sinatra jazz-pop feel. The effortlessly sultry, 6/8 Whispering Words, a sprightly song perhaps titled Spring (as in "maybe love will come again in Spring"), and a particularly haunting breakup song, The Beauty in the Emptying — all new — kept the audience rapt. Nobody said a word, even when the guitars were constantly being retuned (the hundred-degree, humid night outside had a lot to do with that). Which pretty much sums up the show. You would be crazy to miss her the next time she plays here.

Photos of Jenifer Jackson at Rockwood Music Hall, NYC 7/20/08

Jenifer Jackson at Joe's Pub, NYC 3/28/08

In case you haven't been paying attention, there's been a recent crop of songwriters who seem to have decided to write in every single worthwhile style of pop music ever invented - with great success. For one reason or another, maybe having to do with vocals, most of these songwriters are women: Neko Case, Rachelle Garniez and Mary Lee Kortes of Mary Lee's Corvette, to name a few. New York expat Jenifer Jackson is another.

"Now I know how to get people to come to my shows," she knowingly told the crowd at Joe's Pub Friday night. "Leave New York. I've figured it out!" Jackson wasn't exactly a little fish in the pond here, either. Respected by her peers and revered by a fan base for whom she seemingly can do no wrong (if she made an album of Monkees covers, they'd probably buy it), she nonetheless ran into the same brick wall affecting seemingly every New York artist, no matter how well-regarded they might be. Building a following here is tough, with literally scores of live shows competing against each other every night, a hometown media that's essentially oblivious to hometown acts, and an ongoing process of suburbanization where artistically-inclined New Yorkers are being priced out of their neighborhoods and being replaced by corporate executives and their children from the suburbs. In other words, not exactly the kind of crowd you'd expect to come out to see anything more sophisticated than, say, Justin Timberlake. So Jackson packed up and moved to Austin.

Even more than her show at the Rockwood late last year, this was the emotional homecoming she eventually had to make, and she gave the standing-room-only crowd what they wanted. Playing acoustic guitar and accompanied by just violinist Roland Satterwhite, she ran through a mix of mostly more recent material, including several songs from her most recent (and best) cd The Outskirts of a Giant Town. She also debuted three excellent new songs: a hopeful, midtempo country tune, Spring, that wouldn't have been out of place on her 2001 album Birds; a pensively catchy, upbeat number possibly titled Tired; and the best of the bunch, a gorgeous, sad country waltz called The Beauty of the Emptying, with one of Jackson's signature imagistic lyrics. Jackson gets accolades for her songwriting, but tonight was a vivid reminder of what a brilliant song stylist she is, alternating between a nuanced lower register and the soaring, airy delivery that has been her trademark throughout her career. There's great passion and intensity in her songs and in her voice, but it's generally very subtle, tonight's stripped-down arrangements giving her vocals the perfect opportunity to cut through.

"This is a song that earned me two thousand dollars," she told the crowd with considerable irony before launching into a boisterous version of one of her earliest songs, Mercury, the Sun and Moon, a somewhat eerie tribute to the joys and pleasure of being a bon vivant. When she and Satterwhite reached the bridge, she slammed out the song's tango rhythm as he went into a frenzied gypsy-inflected solo. They encored with a fetching duet on the standard Every Time We Say Goodbye, Satterwhite switching to guitar. He's an excellent singer, with a smooth, Chet Baker style delivery, making a good foil for Jackson's warm, wistful vocals. She ended the song with gentle vocalese, going down the scale with a jazzy seventh chord. More than anything, tonight's show was a reminder of everything we stand to lose if this city continues the decline that the Bloomberg administration and its developer cronies are dead set on bringing to its logical conclusion.

Jenifer Jackson at Joe's Pub, NYC 3/28/08

In case you haven't been paying attention, there's been a recent crop of songwriters who seem to have decided to write in every single worthwhile style of pop music ever invented - with great success. For one reason or another, maybe having to do with vocals, most of these songwriters are women: Neko Case, Rachelle Garniez and Mary Lee Kortes of Mary Lee's Corvette, to name a few. New York expat Jenifer Jackson is another.

"Now I know how to get people to come to my shows," she knowingly told the crowd at Joe's Pub Friday night. "Leave New York. I've figured it out!" Jackson wasn't exactly a little fish in the pond here, either. Respected by her peers and revered by a fan base for whom she seemingly can do no wrong (if she made an album of Monkees covers, they'd probably buy it), she nonetheless ran into the same brick wall affecting seemingly every New York artist, no matter how well-regarded they might be. Building a following here is tough, with literally scores of live shows competing against each other every night, a hometown media that's essentially oblivious to hometown acts, and an ongoing process of suburbanization where artistically-inclined New Yorkers are being priced out of their neighborhoods and being replaced by corporate executives and their children from the suburbs. In other words, not exactly the kind of crowd you'd expect to come out to see anything more sophisticated than, say, Justin Timberlake. So Jackson packed up and moved to Austin.

Even more than her show at the Rockwood late last year, this was the emotional homecoming she eventually had to make, and she gave the standing-room-only crowd what they wanted. Playing acoustic guitar and accompanied by just violinist Roland Satterwhite, she ran through a mix of mostly more recent material, including several songs from her most recent (and best) cd The Outskirts of a Giant Town. She also debuted three excellent new songs: a hopeful, midtempo country tune, Spring, that wouldn't have been out of place on her 2001 album Birds; a pensively catchy, upbeat number possibly titled Tired; and the best of the bunch, a gorgeous, sad country waltz called The Beauty of the Emptying, with one of Jackson's signature imagistic lyrics. Jackson gets accolades for her songwriting, but tonight was a vivid reminder of what a brilliant song stylist she is, alternating between a nuanced lower register and the soaring, airy delivery that has been her trademark throughout her career. There's great passion and intensity in her songs and in her voice, but it's generally very subtle, tonight's stripped-down arrangements giving her vocals the perfect opportunity to cut through.

"This is a song that earned me two thousand dollars," she told the crowd with considerable irony before launching into a boisterous version of one of her earliest songs, Mercury, the Sun and Moon, a somewhat eerie tribute to the joys and pleasure of being a bon vivant. When she and Satterwhite reached the bridge, she slammed out the song's tango rhythm as he went into a frenzied gypsy-inflected solo. They encored with a fetching duet on the standard Every Time We Say Goodbye, Satterwhite switching to guitar. He's an excellent singer, with a smooth, Chet Baker style delivery, making a good foil for Jackson's warm, wistful vocals. She ended the song with gentle vocalese, going down the scale with a jazzy seventh chord. More than anything, tonight's show was a reminder of everything we stand to lose if this city continues the decline that the Bloomberg administration and its developer cronies are dead set on bringing to its logical conclusion.

Jenifer Jackson at Rockwood Music Hall, NYC 11/18/07

A triumphant homecoming of sorts. Jackson was an East Village denizen and made a name for herself here before relocating to Austin this past spring. It was obviously the right move. She's never looked more at ease onstage or sung better than she did tonight. Like Erica Smith and Rachelle Garniez, Jackson is another one of those multistylistic songwriting machines, someone who can appropriate literally any style of music and make it work, with fluency, poise and passion. Likewise, Jackson has been known to tweak her vocal style from time to time. On her earlier material, she sang with a gentle, tender delivery, then she went through a brief but spectacularly successful phase as a big belter. Tonight it was obvious that she's gotten more in touch with her lower register, giving her vocals a new warmth and confidence. It suits her well.

When her latest cd The Outskirts of a Giant Town came out last spring, we said it was the best album to come out so far in 2007 and that claim still looks to be valid. Playing a sparse, trio show backed by Roland Satterwhite, who played layers of ambience on violin, and Elysian Fields axeman Oren Bloedow, whose virtuosic, jazzy guitar was spot-on all night, she mixed tracks from the new cd along with a couple of brand-new gems and some older material. On the 70s soul-inflected Power of Love, Bloedow grinned as he went into generic Wes Montgomery mode, playing a solo made up solely of octaves. Was there room on the fretboard for the last note of the verse? Yes! Moments like these are typical at Jenifer Jackson shows.

One of the best things about small-group performances like this is that the songs get stripped down to just the moving parts, which can be fascinating to watch. The title track to Jackson's new album actually turned out to be built on a totally generic indie rock progression that pretty much anybody can learn how to play in a few minutes' time. Yet Jackson pulled it off with her airy, jazzy vocal melody, combined with Bloedow's artful passing tones. I Want to Start Something, with its stratospherically high vocal melody — which Jackson absolutely nailed — was particularly captivating, all impatience and longing for something secure. Their absolutely gorgeous, minor-key, bluegrass-inflected take of Dreamland, arguably the best cut on the new cd, got a welcome boost of energy. Of the new songs, the best new one was a jazz-pop number called Words, seemingly about miscommunication. Jackson's songs, and especially her lyrics, are remarkably terse and crystallized, so it's understandable how not being able to precisely express something would really bother her.

They encored with an audience request from her second album, Mercury the Sun and Moon, a tune Jackson wrote back in the 90s while still in her teens. Stripped down to its eerie tango roots, this version saw Bloedow playing a bassline on the guitar with his thumb as he did on several of the other songs. The crowd wanted more, but Jackson hadn't rehearsed anything else with these longtime cohorts of hers. Always leave the audience wanting more, the saying goes. Tonight Jackson and her band did just that.

"Jenifer's quiet magic will win your heart. Utterly without artifice, this record is pure, groovy and just plain great!"

You want an antidote for your craziness. Something you can turn on when you come home and hit a beautiful chill. Your car is here. And take one of these.

JJ's soothing voice is never saying listen to me; it's always saying listen to the music. I'm so grateful for that. Because when I'm listening to the music, I'm also listening to some little place inside myself that is breathing something so essential and so ignorable.

And the sweeping cavalier genius of producer Brad Jones is in full effect here, in the quiet majesty of the arrangements and the atmosphere. The gifted players are so in touch and so in tune with the music of Jenifer Jackson, whose tempo is unbound by time. Most or all have been with her on stage or studio whenever life allows for a number of years. The essence of their contributions is beyond words, because some occur in dimensions outside the corporeal.

Oren Bloedow's shimmering presence on guitar is a world unto itself. I've never heard him vault the ledge in JJ's music the way he does on "The Change," breathtaking. In fact, I find myself doing passes of this precious record concentrating on one player at a time, and following them down the unique traverse of their path through these tunes, and I'm learning from each of them. Sonny Barbato on Wurlitzer, organ, piano, and accordion, there's so much music under his hands. Pat Sansone on bass, melotron, vibes, and organ is a shape shifter. Greg Wieczorek (aka G-whiz) on drums and percussion is always at the right place at the right time, indispensable. He also sings, along with Oren and Pat, through the disc. The addition of Nate Walcott on trumpet and flugel horn is inspired.

The oriental ambience of the title track is a new flavor, fascinating. I truly get something I can feel from the music of this artist that I cannot do without, and am truly in awe of the truth of that.

I've said it before, many times, many ways. This artist should be huge, she's that good and more. I want to live in the world where she's a big star. In fact, I do live in that world. I'll meet you there, on The Outskirts of a Giant Town.

Her best album, the first instant classic to be released this year. Over the course of her previous six albums, Jackson has carved out a niche that is uniquely her own, even though she wears her influences on her sleeve (Bacharach, the Beatles, and Brazilian jazz/pop most notably). There's an impressive clarity of vision that pervades her music — a courageous one. It's what Camus meant by "lucidite" — it's evident from the first song on this album that this is someone who is firing on all cylinders, every synapse wide awake and often painfully aware of what's going on. Her melancholy, intricate, jazz-inflected psychedelia doesn't shy away from despair or loneliness. But there's always a light at the end of the tunnel: as strange as it may seem at first listen, this is ultimately a hopeful, optimistic album. Recorded live in the studio in order to evince as much interplay as possible out of her stellar backing band, the cd is a multistylistic tour de force, opening with Don't Fade, old school 60s- 70s soul with fluttery organ fills and a soaring vocal. Like Sandy Denny, Jackson's formidable prowess as a singer may not be physical — she's not a big belter — but she packs an emotional wallop.

The album's next cut Suddenly Unexpectedly, set to a fast shuffle beat with a bossa melody and layers of keys, is pure psychedelic tropicalia. The following track, Saturday, is something of an epic, and might be the most powerful song she's ever recorded. It starts out somewhat Beatlesque, like a George song from the White Album. She pedals a chord through the verse, then all of a sudden the minor-key chorus descends: "It doesn't matter anyway — I'll keep it in my memory, that lovely Saturday." Then the second verse kicks in, and everything picks up a notch. Jackson is also a painter, and as the images unwind, this tersely imagistic portrait of a young woman absolutely and heartbreakingly alone is absolutely, heartbreakingly beautiful.

After that, we get I Want to Start Something, more old-school soul with psychedelic flourishes, accordionist Sonny Barbato playing some delicious licks off Jackson's equally tasty rhythm guitar. Her voice takes flight again at the end of the verse: "I'd like to find a place that feels like home — been so many places I don't know why I can't find it."

The next cut, Dreamland, begins with a strangely captivating, tinkly piano intro into a wash of cymbals, then Jackson's guitar kicks in all by itself. It's Nashville gothic with all kinds of eerie, echoey effects from lead player Oren Bloedow's guitar. It's scarier than the fast, bluegrass-inflected version she used to play live, with a gorgeously sad lyric: "The way you loved me was a sin/I played a game I couldn't win/Still I tried so hard to enter in/To the outer edge of Dreamland."

Other standout tracks on the cd include the title track, gentle pastoral raga rock evocative of Meddle-era Pink Floyd, with an amazing piano break by Barbato; Anywhere I Would Journey, with its slow descending progression and watery lead guitar; The Change, an epic old-school soul groove-fest that would be perfectly at home on an Isaac Hayes live album from the early 70s; and For You, which with its tricky time changes and 60s garage rock feel wouldn't be out of place on a Love Camp 7 record.

This album is generously multi-purpose: it's a hell of a headphone album, it would make a great bedroom record, but it's also a good thing to give to anyone you know who's going off the deep end. Jackson's gentle, soft voice and her wise, knowing lyrics offer a kind of solace that's completely absent in indie rock, and the inspiring interplay of the band behind her can be mesmerizing. She deserves props for having the guts to reach down into the abyss to come up with some of the songs on this album, while never losing sight of the subtle, frequently surreal wit that imbues so many of them. It's only April, but I think we've found the best album of 2007 and this is it. Cds are available at cdbaby.com, in better record stores and at shows, peep the website, http://www.jeniferjackson.com.

"For all of the bad pop albums that were put out in 2003, there were indeed some goodies that I got a chance to get to know. This was no easy feat because with the amount of stuff that comes out, true seekers like us can't be expected to really get to know things. Geez, looking at Tangents web page every so often just makes me say, huh, there's another 50 interesting CDs I' m not going to have a chance to hear.

[...] there was an uplifting little pop album from a New Yorker named Jenifer Jackson, called "So High." That was probably my favorite album of all. While completely singer/songwriter, it is also produced to the gills by some cat named Pat Sansone who is also in the Autumn Defense. Jackson's songs are amazing musicially and lyrically, with great changes and transitions, and Sansone's production is like a poor man's Mitchell Froom/Tchad Blake, or Jon Brion. Concertinas, harpsichords, congas, you mention it, warm and earthy, much less of the string and brass stuff that you're in for if you go for the High Llamas record."

Out of New York, Jackson's a wisp of velvet voiced guitar playing songstress who to judge by this, her third album, clearly spent many months of her formative years dreaming in her bedroom to a mixed album collection of Carole King, Laura Nyro, Marvin Gaye, Astrid Gilberto and Burt Bacharach. Thus there's the folksy pop of Down So Low and the sunshine 60s We Will Be Together, a country-folk Through Leaves, 70s soul rippling through Got To Have You and The Power of Love (which manages to fuse She's Not There and You're So Vain in the opening bars) and laid back bossa nova sways for Since You've Been Away and Got To Have You.

As cool as fragrant deodorant in a sultry cityscape, ably assisted by multi-instrumentalist producer Patrick Sansone, Jackson brings a delicate sexy perspiration to the title track and the wind chiming summery float down the stream acoustic delicacy of Blue Forever Mine, while The Invitation opens on a chugging train rhythm before skipping its heels down some jazzman's boulevard, chiffon scarf fluttering in the breeze behind her.

She may flit through an assortment of easy on the ear sophisticated musical genres, but what remains consistent is the fluidity of her vocals, forming themselves to whatever shapes the music demands and the urban romance concerns of her lyrics, whether she's talking about the power of love to provide meaning, the thrill of that first encounter or the melancholy of hearts healing. She's currently without a European deal, so perhaps someone could just start whispering things like 'the next Norah Jones' and then stand back to avoid the rush. "

"Singer Songwriter Jenifer Jackson must have adored Carole King's Tapestry and Joni Mitchell's Blue during their chart reign in the 1970's. Soft, warm threads of those two famous albums echo throughout Jackson's soulful third release, So High, introducing a refreshing new confidence for her most honest effort yet. Jackson's first disc for Bar None, So High offers a breathless sophistication while exploring the endless circle of love, and luckily without pretense.

"One listen to the chiming folk sounds of "Down So Low" will reel you into Jackson's wistful soundscape. Her smooth vocals are sexy, swaggering along to old-school funk and contemporary R&B on "Got to Have You." The title track is just as raw with its layered slinky guitar work, but Jackson also goes pop. From the delicate acoustics of "Blue Forever Mine" and the Astrud Gilberto-style "End of August," one cannot help but be mesmerized by Jackson's musicianship. An impressive tight production allows each song to just breathe. Like Burt Bacharach , Jenifer Jackson found her groove this time around. It's high time you went lookin' for yours, too."

"Aux dernières nouvelles, la new yorkaise Jenifer Jackson cherchait encore un label en Europe. Fichtre ! Dieu sait si sa musique mérite d'être distribuée par ici : quelques écoutes de ce disque suffisent à convaincre qu'il s'agit là d'une artiste supérieure. Sorte de pop-soul riche et subtile, combinant intelligence et sensualité, So High est idéal pour se ressourcer en vibrations bienfaitrices. De la musique pour le corps et l'esprit. Soulignons donc les mélodies, la volupté, la douceur à fleur de peau, et le fait que cette musique a une chair, une texture souple et organique. Le morceau-titre, par exemple, est d'une puissance qui ne se mesure pas en décibels et fait preuve d'une majestueuse aisance. Pour que cette musique passe si bien, sans accroc et sans que l'on s'ennuie deux secondes, il faut du savoir-faire. Que Jenifer soit fille de musicien (Julian Jackson, sphère jazz) ne doit pas y être étranger. Son chant, expert et d'une rare justesse, s'apparente à un souffle, fluide et léger comme de la buée. Et il faut ici saluer l'indispensable Patrick Sansone, qui orchestre et malaxe les instruments à lui tout seul ou presque (on a aussi pu entendre Pat Sansone sur les derniers Josh Rouse, Joseph Arthur, Swan Dive, et The Autumn Defense, son groupe avec John Stirratt, le bassiste de Wilco).
A l'écoute des onze titres de cet album, que je me refuse de décortiquer tant tout y est affaire d'harmonie et d'osmose, je ne constaterai qu'une chose : c'est un des meilleurs disques de l'année. Il semble que tous les disques de Jenifer Jackson diffusent un même état de grâce : Birds, l'album précédent, plus intimiste et berceur, était déjà sublime. Mais quel label en France, bon sang, pourra s'en apercevoir ?

***** à ranger non loin de Curtis Mayfield et Marvin Gaye "

"Whether she's wheeling through a breezy Burt Bacharach-styled arrangement, vocally fluttering between Rickie Lee Jones and Edith Piaf, or writing with the determined but delicate clarity of Joni Mitchell, Jenifer Jackson is an artist possessed of complexity and grace.

"So High, her third record (and first for Bar/None), is such an unusual and self-possessed recording that comparing her too closely to the above artists does her a disservice. Jackson doesn't mimic them. She doesn't particularly try to sound like anybody but herself. But, as evidenced by the staggering array of styles so expertly tackled in this 11-song release, she has absorbed, and in some cases improved upon, most of the finest aspects of delicious, opulent pop.

"The bubbly, Swan Dive-reminiscent opener The Power of Love sets the stage for a sumptuous record. Jackson, producer Pat Sansone (The Autumn Defense, Andrew Bird, Josh Rouse) and an outstanding band create a thick, dark, captivating sonic world - something that would translate visually to a cross between film noir and a classic Blue Note record cover.

"The record unfolds into a series of emotionally complicated and musically breathtaking songs that range from the hushed, high-plains whisper of Since You've Been Away to the sprawling, sexy grooves of Got to Have You and the standout So High. Somebody needs to kiss Sansone on the mouth for that bass line. A sugary Brill Building-style jaunt through We Will Be Together and the woozy, Astrud Gilberto-reminiscent Look Down round out this nigh-on-perfect set.

"The most difficult part of writing about a record like So High is that there aren't enough superlatives to truly express just how damn good this music is. Go buy it."

"Genuine, experienced, and versatile, Jenifer Jackson is a singer/songwriter whose music seeks out the most fundamental human experiences: love, melancholy, redemption, and joy. With a collage of genres deftly arranged and reinvented through her unique vision, she erases borders and speaks to a broad audience of music lovers. Jenifer's new album, So High (Bar None), is peppered with instrumental surprises (note church bells) and has an enduring lyrical quality. "

"...The way she sings makes the most cynical dreamer want to fall in love again, the high risk notwithstanding. Get out the vintage synths and keyboards, vibes and glockenspiel, church bells, bells of every kind, tambourine, cheesy drum machines, many stringed instruments and a handful of amazing musicians.
Most songwriters would kill (or should) for the melodic sense and spirit of this urban angel. She's got beautiful music inside her. More and more I see that not all songwriters have beautiful music inside them. Many have a lot of words and feelings, perhaps some should find a partner for the music or try to write some stories...but the songs of Jenifer Jackson never fail to open my heart and allow a feeling of vulnerable wonder to reappear. No, I don't understand it--but I do feel it, every time, and am again surprised. It's so easy to shut down, little by little, so I'm ever grateful to the artists that crack me back open.
We can only hope that it reaches the right ears in the U.S. or Japan, in Europe, Australia or whatever culture is hip enough to make this superb artist into the star we already consider her to be."

translated from the Japanese by Eiko

Brad Jones production adds subtlety and space to the proceedings allowing the diverse instrumentation and deceptively simple arrangement to make a lasting impression. from the vibes used on opener The Fade via the eastern mantra meets Nancy Sinatra kitsch pop of Mercury, The Sun And Moon to the pedal steel infused twang of What You Said and all points in between 'Birds' is the kind of album that helps the woes of the world to melt away.

Dreamy and as comforting as a lazy, hazy summer afternoon, for the duration of its all too brief 45 minutes, 'Birds' makes the world seem a much better place.

Regular readers of this column might have noticed my affinity for female singers with wispy, breathy, high-pitched voices. Maybe it's a result of my childhood exposure to Astrud Gilberto and high school obsession with the Cocteau Twins, who knows. But it undoubtedly helps explain why I adore Jenifer Jackson's new CD.

Jackson, a New York City-based singer/songwriter, is the daughter of legendary jazz radio DJ Julian Jackson, and her vocal style owes a lot to the school of jazz vocals exemplified by Gilberto, Blossom Dearie and Chet Baker: clear, vibrato-free and with a spun-glass delicacy that gives the lightest songs on the album, like the early-Joni Mitchell-style "The First Day of Winter," a shivery beauty. Imagine if Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval or the Softies' Rose Melberg could actually sing properly.

Musically, however, Birds has only a few jazzy elements--a Milt Jacksonish vibes solo here, a bossa nova beat there--in its mostly folk-rock-based, largely acoustic songs. "Trouble Fire," with its expressive harmony vocals by Alibi fave Josh Rouse, and the pure-country "What You Said" are more indicative: droning Hammond organ, slippery pedal steel, shimmering overdubbed acoustic guitars and brushed drums dominate these 12 songs. Producer Brad Jones gives the album a hazy, miasmic quality, especially on the near-psychedelic "Mercury, The Sun and Moon," that adds an ethereal edge to even the earthiest and most plainspoken songs. The results suggest what Hazeldine would have sounded like if they'd brought their moody, dark pop instincts to the foreground of their songs, or perhaps an alt-country Michael Penn. Dreamy and sensual and surprisingly substantial, Birds is an unexpected, genre-mixing surprise.

I'd already heard this record a number of times, so I thought while I listened anew, that I would do a couple of things around the house. By the middle of the first song, I was sitting on the couch with the speakers roaring, my head in my hands, lost in a reverie on the wonder of woman.

Her melodies are vast, dreamy sculptures that take you right out of your body. Her singing is so smooth and inviting, you need only allow yourself to float away to where that voice is leading you. Every song seems to end too soon, and you start to fall, and then you hit another air current, and climb again.

I have a weakness for all grooves resembling the bossa nova, and I love the way she writes in this feel, but it's only a turn of the diamond in her hand. I'm always in search of pop music that's suitable for adults, and she's high on my list. If your life is too busy, and you need someone to calm you down, here's a record that will touch you in a place where it all makes sense again.

Jackson writes high, sweet melodies that often test the limits of her voice, but her pure, straight-ahead singing style effectively plays up the simple elegance of her arrangements and the intimately revealing nature of her lyrics.

Feeling blithe? Then this record's yours too.
Because Jenifer's certainly crystal.
And though the moon's rising, it spotlights
The wistful elation in Jenifer's writing.
Which glows with each listen more
Beautiful and Slowly Bright.