Jaymay: Autumn Fallin'
Love and loss in a wintry New York.
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Monday, 12, Nov 2007 12:58
Heavenly Records, out November 12th, 2007.
In a nutshell...
Autobiographical personal poetry of love and loss
What's it all about?
Opening with the tender Gray or Blue, Jaymay's silky and slight vocals explore the first flushings of a new love, drenched in detail and opening a story of New York romance. There are moments reminiscent of Regina Spektor and Rufus Wainwright as a sparse production backs a faithful portrayal of a budding new relationship.
The hopeless emotion of the title track provides a perfect snapshot of an album resigned to the pangs of fate but youthful and optimistic enough to retain hope of a brighter tomorrow and it's as sweet and saddening as you'd hope for from a rising star of the New York 'antifolk' scene.
She's got a wonderful way with words and her self-professed Bob Dylan obsession radiates on You'd Rather Run, not just through the accompanying mouth organ but through the definite literary tone running parallel with the album.
Momentum is disappointingly lost with the disarmingly jaunty Hard to Say, evoking a sense of what Norah Jones would sound like if she was a bit less sullen. It's mercifully short, but Jaymay bizarrely shies away from the seductive smokiness of her normal vocals for some profoundly irritating jazzy scatting.
The haunting harmonies of Big Ben restore order while the embittered tone slowly building through the record is unleashed on the painfully honest Ill Willed Man, with Jaymay letting loose vocally for the first time.
And in You Are the Only One I Love, she's fashioned a superb bookend to a subtle story of life and relationships in a wintry Big Apple, with achingly beautiful harmonies growing to an alarmingly moving sing-along climax, surprisingly touching for what's little more than a hushed refrain of the title.
Who's it by?
26-year-old Long Island native Jaymay - born Jamie Kristine Seerman - moved to Manhattan to indulge her love of literature by pursuing a career in publishing only for a 2003 slot at an open mic night to hammer home her true singer/songwriter calling. After her Sea Green, See Blue EP built a steady following through iTunes and Californian indie radio, the major labels took a look and Jaymay's eloquent lyrics were snapped up by EMI Records offshoot Heavenly Recordings. Her debut Autumn Fallin' sees the young New Yorker examining a love affair stretching over seven months in the city that never sleeps.
As an example...
"This city is full of strangers/Like the sky is full of stars/I think it's very dangerous if we don't take what's ours." - Gray or Blue
"I miss winter just because I miss when I knew you best/I miss the typewriter in the basement/I miss making your room a mess." - Sea Green, See Blue
"I've never been one to believe at first sight/But now I know it exists." - You Are The Only One I Love
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
Slim, but it's still a creditable achievement for a debut and exhibiting enough potential to reach the acclaimed heights of her folk forefathers.
What the others say
"It's hard not to be as captivated by Jaymay's natural beauty as she is with boys and big cities." - Betty Clarke, Guardian
"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, BBC Music
So is it any good?
While Spektor, Fiona Apple and Emmy the Great are fair comparisons, Jaymay smacks most of a female Dashboard Confessional, providing a suitable companion piece to Chris Carrabba's emo landmark album The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most. While his breakup album detailed the betrayal of a sensitive soul in the Florida sun, Jaymay details a wintry love affair, laden with the type of earnest soul-bearing we'd be justified in expecting from a New York folk singer.
It's heartbreaking and hopeful all at once and though she loses her grip with the flimsy Hard to Say and the over-indulgence of You'd Rather Run, the listener is firmly in Jaymay's grasp for the majority of the lovingly rendered three-minute portraits of a heart won and lost.
7/10
Lewis Bazley