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Strawberry Lover Jess Klein
Hard Won Innocence: Jess Klein's 'Strawberry Lover' As artists mature, it's rarely a metamorphosis into someone wholly new, but a return to something existent and true in themselves. Such is the case with Jess Klein, whose sophomore release on Rykodisc, Strawberry Lover, finds the singer-songwriter drawing inspiration from both the outlook and the music of her childhood. 'Much of the album is about trying to remain young at heart,'? she says, 'and keeping your heart open when you become an adult and see some things you didn't expect to: heartache, loss, grief, anger. In a way, it's about trying to draw on the strengths I had as a child“ the strength of openness especially“ and using that in the face of some adult hardships. In that sense, the album is also about trying to maintain a child-like innocence even when that doesn't necessarily seem like the logical thing to do, or what everyone else is doing.' Strawberry Lover feels like a culmination and a transcendence of all this experience in the uncharted and often difficult life of a musician, through the baptismal power of the music Jess loved when she was young - Motown. 'There are some really clear Motown influences which I picked up from listening to my mom's music collection when I was growing up,'? she says. The song 'Office Girl,' for instance, is very Ronettes, with the handclaps and backup vocals, and there are some Smokey Robinson & The Miracles-type harmonies. 'A great Motown song looks directly at someone's troubles and then sets them free in a really incredible, uplifting way. I guess that quality comes from a more innocent time. For better or worse, I can't imagine anyone writing 'Band of Gold' or 'Tears of a Clown' today. The world we live in doesn't necessarily inspire that kind of celebration. Everyone's so jaded. Every injustice is so insidious; and yet, those songs are still really moving. With any great Motown song, you can live within the realm of the song, at least for its duration. Somehow, it applies to everyone; its very universal and real and fantastical and it takes you away. I appreciated that as a child and I appreciate that even more now,'? she laughs. The passion that electrifies Strawberry Lover's eleven tracks was both hard-won and completely spontaneous. Jess had written nearly seventy songs since Draw Them Near. But only three of these ended up on Lover as Jess decided to have one last writing session before entering the studio. 'When I finally decided to have Marc Copely produce the album, I told my family and friends, 'I can't talk to you for the next week. Don't be offended if I don't call, I'm just writing.' I went into my poorly lit apartment, and faced my own ideas for the first time in a really long time. I wrote 'Sink My Teeth In' and 'Willing To Change' during that time, one right after the other; there was a direct line from my gut to my mouth. I stopped doing what I thought critics or my label wanted and just did what I needed to do. It was very liberating.'? One remarkable result of Klein and Copely's collaboration is the album’s harmonies, which the two recorded entirely by themselves. 'We knew from the beginning that harmonies were going to play a big role on the album. We both loved the feeling of those sweeping background harmonies on Motown records, or the way harmonies add layers to the melody on 'My Aim is True'? or strengthen the choruses on 'Darkness on the Edge of Town'?. It was so fun; it felt like a total gift to be able to go for that kind of uplifting aesthetic and amazingly Marc's voice and mine blended really well. That feeling of escape and rapture, whether expressed through Motown, rock or sultry reggae, courses through the eleven songs on Strawberry Lover. 'Shonalee,' a floating, haunting ode to a late-shift waitress and the songs on her diner's jukebox, sweeps the listener away just as the jukebox records do the characters in the song, 'far away from the headlines, a million miles from the deadlines.'On the album's opener 'Darkroom,'? Jess begs a lover to rescue her from her own bleak thoughts as gospel harmonies lift the chorus to a triumphant climax. And on 'Office Girl,'? the promise of freedom and release at the end of a white-collar workday explodes into an exultant, Springsteen-worthy chant that takes us from the song's Ronettes-style groove straight into rock and roll's seventh heaven. Strawberry Lover is a testament to hard-won innocence, a defiant mission statement of open-heartedness, and an exhilarating mix of soul and rock that brings us back to what we love about music, and what we forgot we knew. It's the sound of an artist coming into maturity, and defining that maturity for herself. As Jess says of her decision to explore her love of Motown: 'As part of following a sort of innocent path, it seems important to listen to the voices that spoke to me as a child, first, the ones that moved me before I knew too much about the world. When I was still innocent enough to dance around the living room. It feels rebellious, it feels right. There's so much pressure in the world to be hardened and cynical and mean, and I just want to rebel against that.' |
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