featuring…

Sarah Jaffe

Courtesy: Sarah Jaffe's MySpace

I discovered Sarah Jaffe on a sampler album from Austin City Limits, and I’ve been in love ever since. I wish Sarah had a bio or something cool I could post so I could learn more about her, but I seriously can’t find one. I did however find all these beautiful things other people said about her on her official site:

“Every once in a while, an opening act you’ve never heard of takes you by surprise and truly impresses. They start playing. And they’re good. Really good. You stop chatting up your friends and you fall in love with finding new music again.It was mesmerizing Sarah delivered smart, sensitive lyrics with elegant phrasing, beautifully restrained melodies and a very honest, soulful voice.” –BLABBERMOUTH

“Of Thursday’s all-Texan bill, opener Sarah Jaffe triumphed with folk music too robust and interesting to fit in the conventional singer-songwriter category. Her expressive lines are well-worn, but they’re drawn with a distinctly modern touch, and her smoky, blues-tinged voice is radiant with atmosphere and feeling.” – ORLANDO WEEKLY

“Jaffe’s hushed vocals and sharp lyrics were nicely punctuated by her band’s multiple multi-instrumentalists…It was hard not to feel completely embraced by Jaffe’s beautiful voice…She left the stage to a warm ovation, in turn leaving a warm feeling in our freezing Floridian bones.” –QRO MAGAZINE

More about Sarah, after the jump!

Just recently signed with Kirtland Records (an indie label out of Dallas), Sarah plans a full length album this spring, and will also be touring with Norah Jones on a few of her upcoming dates (which you can find here). Also, if you are at SXSW, Sarah is there as well. Go back to that little link and check out her Austin dates as well!

What song did I fall in love with… Even Born Again. Beautiful and haunting, this song just gets stuck in your head and you can’t not listen to it multiple times in a row. Try. I dare you.

And another amazing song… Clementine!

If there is one thing that Sarah Jaffe will never have to contend with it is the idea that she is a female singer for females. There was once a time that being a female singer meant you would undoubtedly be put into an all too snug box. Is she an angry singer? An activist singer? A singer for the victims or the singer your mom bonds with you over? To be honest, when Sarah’s new LP Suburban Nature is released on May 18th she will insert herself into and destroy all those boxes simultaneously, because Sarah is a truth singer …and no matter who or what we are, we all need, and want, our singers to be truth singers.

Growing up in Red Oak, Texas might not be ideal circumstances for breeding the kind of talent that is encompassed in Sarah’s songs, but it does beg the question of nature verses nurture. What we have in us before we are even us, and what we interpret because of life circumstances. Writing since her early teens, many of the songs featured on Suburban Nature were written long before she could even enter the clubs were they are now performed.

Interestingly enough the first single Vulnerable, was written when Sarah was only 17, long before even the material on her first EP, the acclaimed Even Born Again, was produced. Even so, it comprises everything that matters about her voice. If there is one thread that flows through all of Sarah’s work, it is grappling with the self-serving cycles that are in all of us, and  the aftermath that those needs deal out. “I’m a fan of life’s wicked ironies. These things that reveal the truth from an aerial view nowhere near your perspective of the situation, and through these realizations you find redemption.” And so it is with Suburban Nature.

From opening track Before You Go, everything sounds as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon, the sonic spread covering every degree of the mix. It’s thick enough to feel when you breathe, but spacial enough to allow for the one thing that truly matters with singer/songwriters: their voice. When talking to the albums producer and engineer John Congleton (Explosions in the Sky, Bill Callahan, Clinic) about the spacious feel of the album, he had this to say on the matter: “I think it was intentional. Both Sarah’s and my feelings on this was that the vocal should be the focal point have as much space as possible, while the music provided an emotional backdrop.”

Skilled players such as Kris Youmans – cello (Bill Callahan, The Paper Chase, Micah P Hinson) Becki Howard – violin (The Crash That Took Me) Jeff Ryan – percussion (The Baptist Generals, St Vincent, Pleasant Grove) and Robert Gomez – guitar (as himself) provide this essential emotional backdrop. Just take a listen to Pretender for an example of the power and talent contained in this group of players. Layers of moveable music float in, out, under and over lines such as “So here we stand, like flowers in the cold, wilt and wither/Here’s your chance/Tell me what you want/I’m a forgiver.” In other situations the group provide the perfect backbeat so Sarah is free to spin yarn that might not always be fact, but like we said, is certainly truth.

On Clementine, she sings, “We were young, we were young, we were young, we didn’t care.” Although only 24 you actually believe her. You believe her because you believe that no matter what her actual age, she lived through the war of a relationship or fifty that aged her to her core, and now her soul speaks to yours in the places where you have aged, and set down roots that flow as grid in a suburb becoming part of your nature. This why we need singers like Sarah Jaffe and albums like Suburban Nature: We need a truth singer to be a soothsayer, and help heal us in the broken places of our time.