Jay Clarkson
Kindle (Arclife, 135 High St., Dunedin, New Zealand)
by Marc Hirsh
Jay Clarkson
Kindle (Arclife, 135 High St., Dunedin, New Zealand)
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in Space City Rock, Spring 2001
Jay Clarkson's Kindle is the type of CD that sounds really good after you've seen the artist perform live, preferably in a small club. It's also the type that you try in vain to get your friends to like; instead of creating a connection between performer and listener, it sort of implies one that already exists. More than anything else, Kindle sounds like an ad for Clarkson's gigs, or maybe a future album.
That album will probably be a good one (and, for all I know, may well already be out in her native New Zealand), but for the time being, Kindle is what we've got, a CD whose muffled electric guitar quasi-folk sounds awfully unfinished at times. The songs, mostly drumless (preprogrammed keyboard beats usually serve as percussion), suggest a slightly more ornate Cat Power, while Clarkson's voice sounds like a mixture between Margo Timmins, a deeper and less warbly Victoria Williams and just a skosh of PJ Harvey's less frenzied moments. The whole album's pitched at an unsettling minor key; the organ and vibraphone in "Time," for instance, bring to the fore an Angelo Badalamenti feel that bubbles just beneath the surface throughout. The end result is how I imagine Jeff Buckley's quieter bits sound to folks who don't much like him. That tells me there's almost certainly an audience for Jay Clarkson. I'm just surprised that it's not me.