Karen Jonas. The Restless.

On her sixth album release Karen Jonas nudges further from the upbeat honky tonk and country sounds which populated her earlier albums. Much as on her last release, the four song EP Summer Songs, Jonas’ song writing here was informed by her time spent writing a book of poems, Gumball, which she has described as a “cathartic and confessional” experience.  The songs have a gloss to them with Jonas’ regular band (guitarist Tim Bray, bassist and co-producer Seth Morrissey, drummer Seth Brown and multi-instrumentalist Jay Starling) gelling perfectly whether it be on the dark melodrama of Rock The Boat (with its shades of Calexico), the pummel and bustle of classic LA rock on Paris Breeze or the louché Parisian swing of That’s Not My Dream Couch.

With the band in such fine fettle, Jonas delivers a set of songs which, in the main, revolve around love, love lost and regret. There are trysts in Paris on two of the songs, Paris Breeze coming across as quite exhilarating while Elegantly Wasted is more of a comedown, the sparkle now more of a memory. Whether Lay Me Down pertains to these Parisian affairs is moot but on this powerful song Jonas delivers an intimate portrait of a woman unsure as to whether she is just “a casual romance” while We Could Be Lovers is like a daydream with Jonas wondering if she and her protagonist should “Be lovers or maybe just friends.” That she sings in it such a seductive fashion and with lyrics such as “Is it getting hot in here or is it just you, tell me what a nice girl is supposed to do, take off my sweater, are you getting warmer too” leads one to conclude that  she is taking the lead here. It’s a wonderful song with both Jonas’ delivery and the slide guitar reminding one of Maria Muldaur.

There are some sassy southern soul licks on the tale of a stalkerish love struck belle on The Breakdown and an excellent and endearing love song in Forever, perfectly played on acoustic guitar and Dobro. But Jonas keeps the best to the last when she embarks on Throw Me To Wolves, a remarkable slice of country rock in which she comes across as an electrified Dolly Parton while the band sound as hot and sweaty as Waylon Jennings’ crew on Lonesome, On’ry and Mean.

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Karen Jonas. Summer Songs EP.

Here at Blabber’n’Smoke we hugely enjoyed Karen Jonas’ last album, the excellent The Southwest Sky & Other Dreams, so we were excited to receive this latest disc, albeit an EP with only four songs on it. So be it, it will tide us over for the time being.

Jonas, from Fredericksburg, Virginia, has over the course of five albums, proved to be adept at updating honky tonk songs and the Bakersfield sound while her song writing has grown to encompass the wide range of themes she tackled on The Southwest Sky. There’s more than a smidgeon of this on the EP but she opens with a bit of a surprise, her take on the Don Henley hit, The Boys Of Summer. First thoughts on this were, admittedly, that this was somewhat redundant, but listening to Jonas’ fine countrified rock version and then comparing it to the ‘80s synth ridden original, one has to admit that she quite owns the song. Her voice is in total control over the driving beat and swooping pedal steel and she kind of returns some of the song back to its original co-writer, Mike Campbell of The Heartbreakers.

Jonas seemingly was inclined to record this while grabbed by a writing frenzy earlier in the year which has resulted in an upcoming poetry collection, Gumballs, due out soon. Full of personal memories it led to her revisiting snippets of songs she’d started earlier but never completed. Going back to her notebooks, she chose three to accompany the Henley hit, going with a summer theme.

Summer’s Hard For Love is a nostalgic listen. Bathed in a languid and laid-back accompaniment with lazy acoustic guitars and slowly swooning pedal steel it has a touch of Neil Young’s Harvest Moon to it. Jonas sings it kind of sultry, kind of a mix of Patsy Cline and torch ballad singer. Thunder On The Battery, as its title suggests, is more portentous as the band limber up to create an atmospheric rumble. It’s akin to some of the songs on the last album. The EP closes with just Jonas and her guitar on Summer Moon. Close miked, it’s an intimate recording which proves she has the voice and song writing chops to place her amidst the top echelons of our favourite singer songwriters.

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Karen Jonas. The Southwest Sky And Other Dreams

Karen Jonas’ fifth album really steps up to the plate in terms of song writing and delivery. It’s the album she’s been promising to make for some time, building on the many delights contained in her previous releases but here, Jonas, the songs and the band, all conspire to create a wonderful noise.

 As the title hints at, Jonas, from Virginia, is surveying the great southwest – the deserts and dusty towns, faded dreams and lurid fantasies. Some of the songs are personal, based on her memories of travelling around the Mojave Desert, others are based on sketches of characters and places glimpsed as Jonas toured across Texas. As might be expected, it’s an eclectic mix with neon rouged bars, bowling alleys and domestic drudgery all featuring and Jonas and her band conveying the essence of the places visited with an equally eclectic mix of sounds ranging from country to rockabilly and honky tonk. At the epicentre, Jonas is impressive, her voice quite wonderful.

The album opens with the note perfect portrait of a fading lothario, sustained by memories of seventies glory but now just The Last Cowboy (at The Bowling Alley). With its wonderful Tex-Mex country delivery adorned with sweet pedal steel, Jonas captures well the quiet indignities he inflicts on himself as the youngsters fail to celebrate his bowling skills. Palm Tree Paradise is another excellent slice of pedal steel fuelled country rock albeit a little bit chunkier and a lot more tearful as Jonas dissects a past relationship, summing up her partner’s shortcomings but admitting she’d do it all over again. Later in the album, Jonas returns to the theme of relationships on several songs which are fuelled with a desperate sadness and a barely restrained sense of fury but in the meantime there’s a couple of swell up-tempo numbers. Pink Leather Boots is a short and sassy rockabilly number which has a trucker mesmerised by a lap dancer, fantasising about taking her home to meet his mum. There’s more raunch and rockabilly in the roustabout Be Sweet To Me with Jonas snarling in fine fashion. Bridging the feisty and forlorn, Farmer John (no relation to the Nuggets frat rock number) is a dramatic slice of American gothic. The band slip and slither with a menace as Jonas kind of unravels while standing at the kitchen sink wondering where the hell her husband is. It’s Handsome Family territory perhaps but Jonas inhabits it well.

On a similar note but much more resigned in its delivery, there’s the incredibly moving Maybe You’d Hear Me Then,  a shimmering number which disguises the slow burning anger of a woman left at home while Barely Breathing is a more claustrophobic take on a similar situation. Better Days gets this all in the open as Jonas describes a pair of women, a hurt wife dependent on pills, a waitress waking up with a stranger, both, like our opening cowboy, dreaming of their better days. She closes the album with a gorgeous country infused lament on Don’t Blink Honey, a song which on first listen sounds like a lullaby of sorts but turns out to be Jonas’ summation of life, basically, it’s a losing game. It’s an elegant close to an album which is gritty in its substance and lifted by the sheer exuberance of the playing.

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Karen Jonas. Country Songs. At The Helm Records

I presume that there’s a gender imbalance in Americana Music, after all there is everywhere else. For every Lucinda Williams there are ten males who will hog the limelight but it seems that recently there has been a welcome upsurge in female artists who are making waves. Courtney Marie Andrews and Margo Price especially come to mind and on the evidence of her second album Karen Jonas should jump to the front of the queue. From Fredericksburg, Virginia, Jonas, like Price (and Sturgill Simpson) grabs a traditional country sound and drags it squealing and bleating into the present. She has the Bakersfield Sound with some honky tonk chops down to a tee while she’s also able to turn in a yearning ballad. She sounds great, sometimes sultry, sometimes sassy and her lyrics range from her thoughts on Dwight Yoakam’s tight fit jeans to a country rendition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

The album opens on a highlight as the honky tonk strains of the title song sashay into ear sight with fiddle and twangtastic guitar to the fore as Jonas sings about her entree into the world of beery sad songs. It’s all down to her boyfriend leaving her apparently as she needed her heart good and broken before she could sing along. The dim fellow then gets compared to Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam with Yoakam singled out for wearing his jeans tighter than Jonas does. It’s a magnificent song, somewhat tongue in cheek but Jonas delivers it perfectly. The following Keep Your Hands To Yourself is a rip snorting warning to another dastardly guy with Jonas well in control of the situation as the song speeds along while Ophelia is a guitar fuelled Bakersfield filed romp which finds Jonas advising womenfolk not to let their double dealin’ men drive them crazy. There’s more country rumble on the The Fair Shake which twinkles with pedal steel and soulful organ over a doleful twang guitar before erupting into an angry outburst.

It’s not all vibrant country strutting. The Garden shimmers with graceful guitar, pedal steel and piano as Jonas recalls a long ago tryst, “I was 17, you were 21″ she sings amidst images redolent of a teenage romance idyll whilst she also harbours a thought that eventually she and her lover will be reunited in the titular garden. The one quibble here is that a squalling guitar solo bursts out midway through somewhat spoiling the mood, a rare misstep from Tim Bray who otherwise is spot on throughout the album. Wasting Time is a ballad with crossover appeal, just ripe for the plucking while Wandering Heart harks back to the likes of Patsy Cline as does the country torch of Why Don’t You Stay. There are echoes of another Country heroine on Whiskey and Dandelions where Jonas taps into Dolly Parton territory on a song about a woman who dreams about getting enough money to, “buy a little house where we both could live” but is actually content with her lot and her relationship singing, “Don’t buy me roses and bring me wine, I like cheap whiskey and dandelions”.  

Jonas closes the album with the sly and slightly louche tale of Yankee Doodle Went Home, her voice a smoky delight, the band in a late night soul jazz groove, a fine end to what is a great album.

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