By Berlinda Recacho
These days identifying music is a no-brainer, jogged by what I like to call our post-modern collective unconscious: streaming services, algorithm-based apps, and, of course, the Web. But it wasn't always that easy. There was a time not so long ago, when one might hear an obscure song and never discover its title or artist. Finding Jennifer Ognibene (better known as Jenny O) was a throwback to the pre-Internet challenge of tracking down the singer of a song after only one listen, albeit now with a much shorter rate of return.
To put this in context: 30 years ago it took me 3 years of checking bins in record stores and a CD unexpectedly gifted to my brother to discover that the fun jangle-pop song I heard once on the WHFS new music show "Now Hear This" was "Tool" by the British twee quintet Heavenly. Twenty years ago it took me less than a week of combing through blogs, listservs, and program comments to figure out that the catchy nostalgic reverie that gave depth to an otherwise cheesy farewell scene on "Dawson's Creek" was "The Soundtrack of Your Life" by singer-songwriter Erin Moran, who records as A Girl Called Eddy. Last year, when I caught a snippet of a modern holiday carol in an episode of Netflix's "Dash & Lily", it only took an hour of Googling to learn that the song I sought was "Christmas After All" by the aforementioned Jenny O. Problem was: it wasn't available for download or streaming anywhere. It still isn't. But the search gave me a name to follow and when Jenny O's new album, Spectra, dropped earlier this year, I was excited to review it.
Spectra is a musical monologue for navigating the world alone, though not always lonely. "Solitary Girl" is its thesis statement: The buoyant tune circles up and rises, asserting independence and making the case for solitude, but is anchored by a plaintive refrain, "Well if I needed you/Could you meet me there today?" "Advice at a Dinner Party" reverses that order: a mournful assessment of faults and strengths is interrupted by the almost gleeful realization that "Nothing lasts forever/I'm getting better as I age". A bit of an outlier, "Prism" is the darkest song on the album, musically and lyrically, a paean to love veering into obsession. But that is not to say that all else is viewed through rose-colored glasses. Jenny O channels Juliana Hatfield's phrasing in "Make it a Plan", as an unrequited crush fixates on "these moments of lost connection" hoping to make a friend out of a frenemy: "You can stay real quiet and come across mean/what if I decided to say it real clean?" "The Big Cheese" is dictated as an email of regrets: stop the world, I want to get off, until I can come back as the version 2.0 I aspire to be. An elegy for a late friend, "Saint of Fun and Weirdos" begins with a plaintive "I miss you man... Is hell in the end as bad as they said? Are you having a grand old time with all the fools that came before you?" "Golden" rails eloquently against "centuries of men in power" with a simple recommendation: to be "surrounded by the people who/reverberate the best in you/to you."
The repetition of a key word or phrase is a recurring device in these songs; on some tracks, it is the main conceit. "Pleasure in Function" revels in maxims to live by, while "You Are Loved Eternally" is a platitude to ease the friction of bad days. But repetition is most effective when it is worked into a song's verse/chorus/verse structure. It creates new patterns, lulls you into expectations, and then pulls the rug out from under you when the structure re-emerges. "A Club" is chanted like a frog chorus of layered monotone incantations, the lament of the line hovering at the bouncer-guarded entrance.
The beauty of Spectra lies in the cadence of Jenny O's presentation. The way she inhabits her songs imbues them with feeling, turning what might be a simple treatment into something far more nuanced and complex. Watching Jenny's five-song set on Setlist.fm, from this past April, I was impressed by her live performance, a preview of what it will be like for her as the opener for another Jenny -- Jenny Lewis -- on tour dates this fall. In a album that emphasizes sonic grooves over lyrics, "The Natural World" pairs an undulating chorus with a gentle existential rap, and a self-fulfilling prophecy for the artist herself:
"I quit the tradition/It was an old superstition/And I made up a new one from experience
It's a practice of wonder/To keep the mind from going under/I've been granted permission/To be marvelous."
[Photo: Jenny O Facebook page]