Jess Jocoy - Brighter Eyes (2021)

“Born and raised a two-hour drive south of Seattle,” Jess Jocoy could be just one more white goose among the countless impetuous flutters around the deceptive lights of Nashville. How many of them have thus consumed their wings in vain? Her unwavering determination aside, however, two or three things could set her apart. First of all, her voice: at once powerful, evocative and modulated, she conveys at leisure this wounded pathos without which there is no possible country-music. But while certainly decisive, this asset alone would not be enough in these times of frantic competition and formatting. Both admiring Emmylou Harris, John Prine and Jason isbell, the bitch sharpened, during her self-study, a fiery songwriter pen. The four new titles offered by his first post-containment business card (after an EP released in 2018, New Heart / Old Soul, and his album the following year, the aptly titled Such A Long Way) attest that his acuteness his observation, his eloquence and his conviction were in no way altered by this ordeal. It is that under its manifest sensitivity, this damsel conceals one of those damn fighting spirits that the great Laurent Chalumeau aptly described, when he spoke of these female artists forced to a much more offensive pugnacity than that of their male equivalents, in this rodeo. macho that remains the Music Cty industry. And while many bimbos submit without batting an eyelid to each new canon in force in this business without morality (at the risk of seeing themselves conditioned like soap bars), Jess Jocoy, not content with “stick to her guns” on the strict level. formal (his tremolos are accompanied by pedal-steel, fiddle and harmonica that Charlie McCoy would easily dub), gives himself the nerve to portray a marital breakdown by adopting the point of view of the husband (“Mansion On A Hill”) ), giving birth to a de facto classic moment worthy of the great Lucinda Williams. The more aerial “Constellations” benefits from a crystalline solo of the six strings of John Cavendish, supported by a rhythmic with chrome spurs, while the concluding “Winter” draws a judicious parallel between personal loneliness and the current planetary disarray, in a fresco whose dramatic dimension is magnified by a touching dialogue between pedal-steel and Telecaster… Believe us: whatever happens now, this girl will never resume a job as a waitress.