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The ten songs of debut long-player, Autumn Fallin', detail a wintertime love affair, which begs the question of whether she can write about anything else, and if not, whether she's busy dating again in hopeful anticipation of making that 'difficult second album' a little less difficult.
With a style that is ostensibly something akin to contemporaries like Feist and Laura Veirs; sweet, heartfelt vocals and strumming folksy guitars, albeit with a straighter edge, in some ways it sounds a little to contrived, often at pains to make sure we're oh-so-aware that this is a special, artsy, New York-kind of a relationship she's singing about, something a bit more important than usual, something messily awash with typewriters, songwriters, poetic drunks and the like.
Things tend to work best when the instrumentation is fuller. Piano and strings-laden "Blue Skies" is a timeless-sounding triumph, and album opener "Grey Or Blue", with its cutesy, 'first-blossoming-of-love' lyric isn't far off either. "You'd Better Run" is an ambitious, ten-minute chugging waltz of a song, all warm Hammond organ flourishes and plink-plonk toy pianos. It doesn't so much as offer a passing nod to Blonde On Blonde-era Bob Dylan as kiss it on both cheeks and have a half-hour chinwag.
The weakest song, the heavily stylised, jazz-tinged "Hard To
Say", is insufferable. Imitating a trumpet with your voice
is never a good idea, and the stench of kookiness is overwhelming. At times like this, the album sounds on the verge of becoming a parody of what the rest of the world expects a young, female New Yorker with an acoustic guitar to sound like.
Autumn Fallin' signs off with "You Are The Only One I Love", perhaps a perfect benchmark for assessing whether you'll love Jaymay or hate her. She's produced an album with genuinely amazing moments, but the overall effect is a bit stifling, something like being smothered to death with candyfloss. --Stewart Turner
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
Customer Reviews
Thematically, Autumn Fallin' concerns itself with the aftermath of a promising relationship that only lasted seven months in the end. Helping to strengthen this sense of one unified theme are recurring references to autumn, New York, song-writing, sketching, and the former lover's blue eyes.
The album's undoubted centrepiece is "You'd Rather Run", which is an epic ten minutes in length. It is a slow-tempo song, which recalls Bob Dylan's "Visions of Joanna" in terms of its drawn out, detached, and detailed way of describing a relationship. In this instance, though, the singer is wondering whether there was ever much there to begin with, as perfectly captured by these lines:
It's funny what you miss, it's funny what you don't
I've thought it all through, the potential to fondly reminisce is this:
I won't.
This is particularly ironic given the opening song of "Gray Or Blue", where the relationship begins with the uncertain feelings that follow a kiss that puts a friendship at risk by having crossed the boundary into seeing can it become more than that.
Elsewhere, "Blue Skies" is a song to rise above feelings of world-weariness, as solace is sought through thoughts of great open spaces high above claustrophobic city life. Perhaps inevitably, the manner in which Jaymay sings the phrase "blue skies" does bring to mind ELO's famous song. Yet this is a number where her voice is allowed to soar that bit higher as if it was a small bird set free.... Read more ›
Sea green sea blue is one of the best track of the year with other not far behind. its a beauiful album and one whihc i recomment thoruoughly!
Perfect for a lazy afternoon chilling out in your bedroom.
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