Despite that frosty Ohioan echo, Mayfield is a convincing and oddly charming tour guide out into that dark. Brief glimpses of light make the dark paths through these songs seem even darker, more isolating. With the exception of “Grown Man”, which comes off as a kind of 8-bit reggae and spoils a downright sultry vocal performance, these new explorations and textures work in Mayfield’s favor. There are different ways, it turns out, to create this kind of crushing space, and this one has more variations and more surprises waiting to creep out of it. Tell Me manages to maintain the beautifully busted feel of Mayfield’s breakout record, but also succeeds in a new and ambitious sonic landscape. You’ll grin at the opening lines about a jilted cabana boy, just before she breaks your heart all over again by song’s end. Her story, however, reveals itself to be slyly funny. The trick works best on “Sometimes at Night”, which is as stark a composition as there is on the record. We can’t hear her resignation quite as much as before, and so her sing-songy delivery on the shuffling “Nervous Lonely Night” masks her dark lyrics rather than laying them bare for us. Now, the moments of venom shot at others, as well as the cutting self-deprecation, catch us a little off guard. Her haunting deadpan has bloomed into something more melodic and, as a result, more surprising. “Our Hearts Are Wrong” serves as a mission statement in some ways, both sonically, with Auerbach’s bracing guitar fills and Mayfield’s ghostly delivery, and thematically as Mayfield claims “I am just like you”, but then admits that is exactly the problem.įor all the repeated ideas of heartache, though, Mayfield is not the same singer we heard a couple years ago. So while Mayfield’s lyrics often deal in a vocabulary of heartache we know well - “The only time I miss you is every single day”, she sings on “Our Hearts are Wrong” - there’s still a fresh feel to these songs, and a surprising maturity and complexity from the 21-year-old singer. It’s a record about finding someone you can relate to, but realizing that, well, you relate to the wrong people. In fact, that confusion between her intentions and her lover’s comes up often on Tell Me. “Tell me if I should not see a friend in you”, she insists, calling into question her judgment before giving it up altogether. The dried-out tom-work on the drums chugs it forward with a surprising gusto - and then there’s the playfully grunted “oohs” and “aahs” that punctuate the track - but it also finds Mayfield at her most floundering. The title track walks the line between this darkness and light. Yup, moments of light are fleeting here, but are all the more impressive for their rarity. Of course, then “Somewhere in Your Heart” follows with the sobering opening, “My mind is weak and twisted, along with my fantasy”. “Suddenly I can see blue skies”, she bursts out on the surprisingly bright “Blue Skies”, and even if you feel like she’s fooling herself, even if the buzzing guitar belies the optimistic sentiment, the song hooks you deep enough to be convincing. Of course, maybe Mayfield knows this, because she does give us a few moments to catch our breath, to wave our hands in front of our faces and make sure we can still see, that there’s still a glimmer of light for us. So while the emotional hangover for this one might be hefty, it is very much like a good night of drinking - it’ll feel great, like the best idea in the world, until it’s over. It’s also far more adventurous and tuneful than its predecessor. If With Blasphemy So Heartfelt was a shadowy record, then this one, in its darkest moments, is pitch black. Organs, electric guitars, echoing drums, and even Mayfield’s own harrowing voice all stretch farther here, and rumble deeper. Instead, Mayfield and producer Auerbach build expansive, reverberating tracks. Mayfield’s acoustic guitar, though still prevalent, isn’t the focus anymore. Tell Me, her third record and first for Nonesuch, is somehow starker than that previous record. No matter what you called them - and ‘singer-songwriter fare’ doesn’t do it justice - those songs resonated through all that gaping, dark space. They were blues, but only really in feeling. Her breakthrough sophomore record, With Blasphemy So Heartfelt, gave us a stark but ultimately arresting set of songs. Not that spacious, comforting kind of echo, but rather something far more bleak and isolating. If Ohioan Jessica Lea Mayfield - or her producer, Black Keys’ singer Dan Auerbach - is representing her state with this sound, then Ohio is a place that has a hell of an echo.
0 kommentar(er)
