Artist: Jessica Lea Mayfield
Title: With Blasphemy So Heartfelt
Label: Munich
Genre: Indie
Bitrate: 160kbit av.
Time: 00:36:52
Size: 45.43 mb
Rip Date: 2009-01-22
Str Date: 2009-03-02
1. Kiss Me Again 3:19
2. For Today 3:35
3. I Can't Lie To You, Love 4:43
4. We've Never Lied 2:45
5. I'm Not Lonely Anymore 2:19
6. Hold You Close 2:19
7. Call Me 3:04
8. Greater Heights 3:00
9. The Onje That I Love Best 3:17
10. Bible Days 3:25
11. Is This Love? 2:51
12. You've Won Me Over 2:15
Release Notes:
Jessica Lea Mayfield sings with a drawl that goes slightly
flat when she sustains notes and gives certain words the
semblance of regional color. It could be a personal
characteristic of her downcast voice, or perhaps a nod to her
Rust Belt upbringing, but the 19-year-old singer/songwriter,
who recorded her 2007 debut under the name Chittlin', sounds
immediately distinctive and poised on "Kiss Me Again", the
opening track on her second album, With Blasphemy So
Heartfelt, calling to mind but ultimately surpassing
comparisons to Hope Sandoval or Syd Straw. "You can kiss me
again if you want, I don't mind," she sings, yet she sounds
actively invested in her romantic passivity-- a fascinating
and endlessly listenable contradiction.
Blasphemy was produced by fellow Ohioan Dan Auerbach, who
corralled Mayfield into singing on the Black Keys' Attack &
Release earlier this year. Here he swathes her vocals in
dreamy country production, heavy on rumbling guitar and even
heavier on atmospherics that give her songs a vinyl noir feel
that's more Brick than Double Indemnity. His slurring riffs
illuminate the inner turmoil of "I Can't Lie to You, Love",
and a banjo adds spikes to "We've Never Lied" as Mayfield
sings, "I'll talk to whoever I goddamn wanna." Her quavering
vocals are textured in reverb, as if to suggest that her
lyrics are inner monologues resounding in her love-fevered
brain. Emphasizing the physical-- breath on neck, hand
clasping hand, lips against lips-- her lyrics suggest a world
where kisses can still pack contradictions and lying is an
everyday occurrence, and her subtly dramatic vocals bring that
world to life.
As jaded and adult as she comes across on "Call Me" and "Bible
Days", Mayfield still sounds like she's describing the
tribulations of young love, although that assertion may be due
to her age prompting preconceptions in the listener. Still,
concrete descriptions like "I was walking with your left hand
in my back pocket" (from the lilting, resigned "For Today")
sound like she's singing for all the Lindsay Weirs of the
world. Noting Mayfield's age shouldn't suggest she has little
authority beyond the late-teen set. Just the opposite: The
relationships she describes on Blasphemy are supremely dark
and compromised-- not sweet but scarred. On "The One That I
Love Best", as Auerbach churns out a thundery riff, she yearns
for the guy who's "my first thought in the morning," but then
she mentions he's also "the reason that I cry myself to
sleep." It's these complexities and contradictions that make
Blasphemy more than just a collection of conflicted love
songs, as in total they cohere into a strong statement of
identity by a woman who is finding out that she might just be
"happier when I'm alone."