Jessica Lea Mayfield: Tell Me (Nonesuch)

 |   |  1 min read

Jessica Lea Mayfield: Trouble
Jessica Lea Mayfield: Tell Me (Nonesuch)

With a languid delivery not dissimilar to Lucinda Williams but with a whole swag more alt.rock in her system, Mayfield certainly keeps excellent company: she appeared on the Black Keys' album Attack and Release (the Keys' Dan Auerbach produced this); she has opened for familiar Elsewhere names such as the Avett Brothers, Ray LaMontagne and Jay Farrar; and came into her current musical location via bluegrass and a love of Dave Grohl's Foo Fighters.

There's no bluegrass here though, folks.

This is (mostly) moody alt.country given an indie.rock twist'n'jangle -- and damned if she doesn't sound like a hurtin' Karen Black in the Jack Nicholson/Bob Rafelson film Five Easy Pieces on the monochromatic/monotone Trouble.

It's very much the stuff of a lonely motel room near a railway track in the Mid West, but with an electric guitar and buzzy amp, not a mournful acoustic.

Auerbach and the small band add slightly disconcerting trip-hop touches in places (Tell Me) and in others locate Mayfield in a strange western saloon -- but it is her self-assured lyrics which grab your attention: yes she's been hurt and there is a sexual backdrop, but she's more mature and confident than her lovers ("I ain't gonna change for nobody at all, I'm starting to like this new love I have found") and she has -- in her lyrics -- found her voice.

"I won't let you stand in my way" she sings on the wonderful, sad sounding Sleepless right at the end. "I'm not alone, I have company, an internal roar that won't let me be."

These could be read as feminist polemics, but they sound utterly personal discoveries.

And from the twanging, dreamy but gloom-laden opener I'll Be The One You Want Someday through the almost-soulpop and poetics of Blue Skies Again (the most mainstream track here) and the oddly cheap techno-groove of Grown Man (younger woman reassuring her older man, and herself, about the relationship) to the sexual Sometimes at Night (located in "one of those seedy outdoor motels") this is very different album which constantly unpsets expectations.

Jessica Lea Mayfield has country in her blood but a big city world weariness and -- like the best -- suggests she has lived these songs.

This really is quite something.

Like the sound of this? Then try this.

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears: Tell 'Em What Your Name Is! (Universal)

Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears: Tell 'Em What Your Name Is! (Universal)

You only need to hear a few bars of the first three tracks on this one to say "James Brown". And Black Joe and band out of Austin wouldn't deny the influence. There's also a smattering... > Read more

Mdou Moctar: Afrique Victime (Matador/digital outlets)

Mdou Moctar: Afrique Victime (Matador/digital outlets)

Remarkably, it has been more than 15 years since Elsewhere started to write about what has been called “desert blues” or “Sahara blues” out of the Tuareg (and beyond)... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

Donovan: Troubadour; The Definitive Collection 1964-76 (1998 compilation)

Donovan: Troubadour; The Definitive Collection 1964-76 (1998 compilation)

When I interviewed Donovan in 1998 -- mindful I might have to introduce him to a readership which had probably never heard of him -- I noted that even back in his heyday of the Sixties he'd been a... > Read more

CARAVAGGIO, MAN AND MYSTERY (Arts Channel doco): The cut and thrust of art

CARAVAGGIO, MAN AND MYSTERY (Arts Channel doco): The cut and thrust of art

Few 17th century artists engage the modern audience in quite the same way as the man known as Caravaggio. He was, by contemporary accounts, an aggressive knife-carrying and swaggering figure, an... > Read more