ARTiST : Jennifer O'Connor
ALBUM : Over The Mountain, Across The Valley, And Back To The Stars
LABEL : Matador
GENRE : Indie
RELEASE : 2006-08-04
STREET : 2006-08-22
ENCODER : LAME 3.90.3
QUALiTY : 180kbps avg / 44.1kHz / Joint Stereo
SiZE : 52.5 MB
PLAYTiME : 00:40:12
+ TRACK LiSTiNG +
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[#] [Track Name] [Time]
1. Century Estates 2:08
2. Dirty City Blues 3:27
3. Exeter, Rhode Island 3:02
4. Sister 2:52
5. Today 4:03
6. Bullshit Maze 3:28
7. Complicated Rhyme 2:42
8. I Was So Wrong 3:49
9. Turn It Down 3:14
10. Perfect Match 3:54
11. Tonight We Ride 4:08
12. I'll Bring You Home 3:25
40:12
+ RELEASE iNFORMATiON +
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Jennifer grew up in Connecticut, Florida, and finally Atlanta, where
after college she joined Violet, a band often compared to X and the
Pixies. She started playing and recording solo after quitting Violet
and moving to New York City. Her influences are other artists with a
fresh take on personal experience, ranging from Destroyer, Silver Jews, Aimee
Mann, and Smog, to Dylan and Petty, as well as Jay Z, Kanye West, and
Dizzee Rascal.
Jennifer released her debut EP, Truth Love Work, in 2000. Time Out
wrote, "O'Connor is another Liz Phair or Elliott Smith waiting to
happen. Her understated guitar-based songs lack the primping, preening
and obviousness of Phair and the sad-sack whining of Smith. Rather, her
matter-of-fact lyrics tell stories that us regular joes can relate to."
Her self-released, self-titled debut followed in 2002, and Red Panda
released the acclaimed The Color And The Light in May 2005.
Over The Mountain. is her 3rd CD, but it has the immediacy of a debut.
The past year saw many personal upheavals which informed it more than
she expected. "It's been so tumultuous, I think that inevitably crept
into my songs," she says. "I wouldn't say that I always write from
experience, but I did a lot of it on this record." For her most
emotional songs yet, she self-produced and got rid of reverb and
extraneous sounds, giving them an urgency that her other records didn.t
always have. She explains, "There's a lot of space; we purposefully
pared everything down to what was necessary for the song."
While Jennifer writes (and often performs) alone on guitar, each song
here (save the acoustic single-take "Today") is fleshed out with a band
which includes her longtime drummer Jon Langmead, James McNew (Yo La
Tengo) on bass, Kendall Meade (Sparklehorse, Mascott) on keyboards and
vocals, and other friends, including Britt Daniel (Spoon) on vocals, and
Al Weatherhead, who produced Color and plays guitar on many tracks. The
record was recorded by Jim Bentley at The Fort in Brooklyn.