I was listening to the radio a long time ago. There was desk work to do. Alan Raw was on BBC Radio Leeds and he said something. A song began and the air changed. Whatever else I was thinking about disappeared and the lonely room of the song filled my attention. The verses moved step by step through hopeless love to unexpected resolution with few adjectives and minimal action. The male/female nonspecific voice sang with an unusual degree of honesty and self-knowledge. The outcome of the story became important and I could think of little else for a long time afterwards. Some of that was about the story itself. Some of it was about who could have made such a song. It was JASMINE KENNEDY and the song was "Cardigan Sweater".
"Cardigan Sweater" is on the album "A LOVE SONG TO FINANCE" and it does stand out as a significant achievement, but if it's the only Jasmine Kennedy song you know, you are missing a lot more than you might expect. Go on line and buy the whole album now. Don't bother with this review.
Reviews are normally published to greet the release of new music, to act as public documentation of creative work, or to offer a moderately informed view as to whether a reader might want to buy it, or not. This review in The Daily Album does an outstanding job. The review on this page, I suppose, is more of an appreciation and a thank you to an artist I have never met. I hope I can do the album justice because it stands out as special and it should be widely cherished.
50 seconds from the beginning of the first song "Laura" there is the first of the endearing idiosyncrasies that mark the album as original, uncopied and individual. It is the briefest of self deprecating chuckles. It takes up no more than the word "I" in "I just smirked" but it is close to the heart of how Jasmine's Kennedy's stories become more than routine journeys through the couplets of young-adult love songs. It gently transforms what seems like a real memory for the writer into a vivid experience for the listener.
This ability to fold her West Yorkshire accent and conversational voice into the heart of her music is a recurring feature of the songs. Brief encounters and longer regrets are the principle subject matter. A wide palette of musical colours and textures give them form.
The Cardigan Sweater song is played a little slower than that first radio demo. It has depth and resonance from the start. Piano and bass and an occasional soft wave of brushed cymbal build gradually into a delightful six eight sway of sheer pleasure and the story starts to find hope of holding on to a now and forever love. At the emotional high point there's a full band of happy friends playing on whatever they're best at. Accordion, trumpets and so forth. The song lasts a whole minute longer than the demo (which was already 6 minutes). It's perfect
"Percy Anderson" positively skips along in comparison. It's a student meets student story with the unaffected easy poetry that flow through all her lyrics:
"All I could say was "I’m so glad we could finally meet". / What I meant was "I've never seen eyes such a beautiful green. / And you seem like a sweetheart to me. / Like you're wise, caring, and kind to an immeasurable degree." / At least that’s what I’d mean… but I just turned to leave."
The song "Twenty-six and One" is the least narrative, and the most opaque of her songs. Perhaps that indicates she has something precious or secret in mind? Puzzling it over, I turned to the text of Maxim Gorky's short story of the same name and quickly fall in love with the way he writes. So there’s another reason for thanks, a new author for me to get stuck into.
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The important thing about Gorky as a key to the mystery of this one song seems to live in this extract from the story, part of his description of bored, silent prisoners making biscuits day after day in a hot and uncomfortable cellar.
"Sometimes we sang, and our song began thus: During work some one would suddenly heave a sigh, like that of a tired horse, and would softly start one of those drawling songs, whose touchingly caressing tune always gives ease to the troubled soul of the singer. One of us sang, and at first we listened in silence to his lonely song, which was drowned and deafened underneath the heavy ceiling of the cellar, like the small fire of a wood-pile in the steppe on a damp autumn night, when the gray sky is hanging over the earth like a leaden roof"
I think that suggests that Jasmine Kennedy knows exactly what she is about. Perhaps every songwriter since Gorky has known those words too, but I am grateful for having been sent to them at last by someone who personifies the approach so perfectly. Her one unaccompanied song "Reasonable Reaction" has a very contemporary subject matter (road rage) but its form, vocabulary and delivery evoke the style and gravity of much older English singers like Shirley Collins or Norma Waterson and it certainly shares that deep therapeutic power noted by Gorky.
The songs on "Lovesong To Finance" have been recorded by Neil Innes at ATA Studios in Leeds "a garage in Leeds" according to Jasmine Kennedy's online notes with a prodigal village of musicians and instruments that includes Jasmine Kennedy: Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar; Neil Innes: Double Bass, Vibraphone, Electric Bass; Taz Modi: Vibraphone, Hammond Organ, Piano; Joost Hendrickx: Drums, Percussion; Simon Beddoe: Trumpet, Flugelhorn; Kris Wright: Percussion, Vibraphone; Simon Nixon: Horn Arrangements, Trumpet; Al McSween: Piano, Accordion; Tony Birkhill: Clarinet; Rachel Modest: Vocals; Tom I'Anson: Trombone; Ron Christlow: Trumpet; James Howarth: Piano; Fuzzy Jones: Vocals; Matt Ball: Trombone; and James Hamilton: Trumpet. It could have been a an unwieldy crowd but the arrangements are done with gentle good will and they sound perfect. They suit the person, they suit the songs and they suit the mood of resignation and honesty that holds everything together so well.
http://jasminekennedy.bandcamp.com/album/a-love-song-to-finance
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