She doesn’t want us to read her biog, see her profile or wave to her in the street. She doesn’t want us to prevail on her upbringing on Long Island, New York as one of six children. She will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. She just wants her music to speak for itself. And it does, with no small amount of empathy either.
Jaymay’s music is the uninhibited rush of whispers after midnight, the unpicking of innermost secrets, candid snapshots, keys in locks. It’s a steady stream of injokes and outjokes, shared toothbrushes, shared dreams. Finishing off relationships like some people finish off other people’s sentences, it almost feels as if we shouldn’t be listening, such is the awkward, crass devotion of her folly. It’s the aural equivalent of walking around in just your socks and underwear or poorly applied makeup, a feeling that is no better illustrated by kick-off track, ‘Gray Or Blue’, a track that begins in a fumbling, unbuttoning fashion … a double bass … a guitar … before attracting a minimum of other devices … a shaker … a xylophone. It’s like ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ for people who prefer to stay in of an evening.
Punctuated by knowing asides to the camera and poor coordination, Jaymay draws attention to the very act of composition and performance (‘I feel so helpless now my guitar is not around/And I’m struggling with the xylophone to make these feelings sound’). It’s a poignant self-reflexive move: a love-song about a love-song, a paean about a paean, and of course it’s hugely romantic in a kitchen-sink, post-Sylvia Plath fashion.
Poised somewhere between Regina Spektor, Stephin Merrit, Lee Hazelwood and Kate Nash, this latterday Melanie Safka has a brand new key and an untidy apartment to take you back to. Kooky, bookish, whimsical, ‘Autumn Falling’ fashions a setting from the ashes of idle promises and reckless declarations of love, a setting in which friendships explode with the force of a faulty firecracker and love dissolves into the tears of loneliness and isolation from whence it came. The album’s defining moment comes with the shuffling 50s arpeggio and the purring accordion of title track, ‘Autumn Falling’ – the playfulness and controlled-resentment that characterises the album finally collapsing beneath a shower of uncomfortable sighs and wintry goodbyes. The images are familiar – the snow, the keys to the room, Central Park Zoo – but they’re no less familiar than the crushing sense of defeat that accompany them. Goodbye is goodbye whether it’s said with a smile, the wave of a hand or tipped by your lover’s boot.
It could be less ‘girly’, perhaps, less precocious, and the effort to smile seems forced on occasions (the perky Cole Porter musical-review, ‘Hard To Say’ is performed with all the conviction of someone pulling their own Christmas cracker). It may be in keeping with character – but not with the spirit of the album. It is, however, more than ably redeemed by the cantankerous and woozy, ‘You’d Rather Run’ and the rolling, lisping candour of ‘You Are The Only One I Love To Love’ – a veritable chocolate-box of hypnotic riffs and cyclic, purring vocals set against a background of tenement buildings, leaves and parks, giddy conversations, parental instruction and noisy playground activity.
Sparse, minimal and trembling with all the magic that bra-straps and zippers entails my only reservation is that Jaymay’s ‘Autumn Falling’ should come with a health and safety warning: to reduce the risk of injury make sure there is a safe distance between you and the torch this woman is carrying.