Jennifer O’Connor  

Here With Me

Matador 

 
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From the initial strums of “The Church and the River,” Jennifer O’Connor’s new album Here With Me could be mistaken for derivative Americana.  Those fears are laid to rest with the first line: “Between the church and the river/My love waits for me to stand and deliver/Every promise that I’ve ever made/I want to keep them now/And I am not afraid”.
   
It is an auspicious opening that sets the tone for the Brooklyn-based songwriter’s fourth full-length. Here With Me conjures the best Americana music of yore while keeping one finger on the spirit of punk. But it’s O’Connor’s plaintive contralto – sung with gorgeous reserve – that elevates the proceedings.

“Always in Your Mind” finds her describing someone who is always “checking numbers and regarding fears”.  It’s a stark character sketch set against an uncomplicated musical backdrop.  Meanwhile, “Daylight Out” could be a long-lost Replacements rocker, in which O’Connor declares, “I’m gonna go back where I started/It’s gonna be so broken-hearted/I’m gonna go back to where I began”.

The title track takes a similar tack.  “Misery loves the cruel way that you speak to yourself/And I love the cool way you look at me,” she sings against a bouncy acoustic guitar pattern to a prospective lover on “Here With Me”.

O’Connor’s quieter songs are the most effecting, though.  Accompanied only by a fingerpicked guitar, “Valley Road ’86” offers a chilling depiction of the human condition.  “There’s diamonds in the eyes/Of little girls who learn to justify/Tremendous loss/Tremendous lives”, she sings, presumably to a childhood friend who may have long since departed this world.

Recorded mostly live, these 12 tracks bear an unfussy production ethic that imbues O’Connor’s songs with elegant simplicity.  Here With Me is as timeless as it is immediate.

– Lee Simmons