3 out of 5

Label:

Producer: John Congleton

Yes, it’s chick-folk is totally not my genre, and I’m not a teenager (Frye, being a youngster at 23 as of this writing – according to her bandcamp page – is still writing for the youths, methinks), AND this EP is ‘name your price’ on bandcamp AND I totally just downloaded it because Congleton produced it… so it’s not fair for me to rate it.  And yet, posterity mother duffing fuck DEMANDS that I do, and by ‘demands’ in all caps I mean that I have a lot of time on my hands, which makes that sentence ‘posterity mother duffing fuck I have a lot of time on my hands that I do,’ which doesn’t really make any sense, which means I possibly have no grasp of language so I shouldn’t be allowed near a keyboard?

Chuckle.

Anyhow, calling this chick folk totally sums it up, for better or worse.  Frye sings like a lot of major label lady acts – bold, with a sneering edge when delivering a more snarky line, a girlish trill when delivering a lovey line – and is primed for singles.  That’s not to deny the talent here, and though Congleton is often a backseat producer (to my ear), I think in the right setting he can definitely help young acts shape their sound, and so though tracks like ‘Like a Light’ are totes radio friendly sunshine, there are minor diversions to the guitar lines, or subtleties in the twinkling pianos that most big studio productions would either smooth out or bring all to the foreground so the audience HEARS it, but John and Jessie seem content to let some happy accidents stumble into the pleasant jangle, giving these 5 songs enough of a boost to merit some re-listens, or, yeah, for your teen looking for something still pretty but outside of the radio norm, that edge exists here.  Even moreso on her “rock” tracks, of which, on this album, there are two.  I’m a sexist for sure, but this is my problem with a lot of chick acts, that they seem to only dial up the non “I love him love me” feelings when they add distortion into the mix.  I mean, there’s a study there in social / gender dynamics that could go on for a million years, but it’s why the lady singers in my musical collection are picked and chosen carefully.  And to flip this sexism around (because, again, as a sexist, I’d remind the “you’re a sexist” label-flingers that they seem to forget to turn the tables on me), I accept that my ears are already gender bias, letting male aggression flitter through the majority of the male-led bands in my collection with nary a thought…  So… yeah.  Elect me already.

Uh.  When Jessie plugs in her guitar, those tracks are pretty awesome.  The hooks are herky jerky, she’s not just going for easy ‘book-look-hook’ rhymes, and the song structures seem to break from the standard radio structure of start quiet and gimme a happy chorus.  But there’s only two of those tracks here.  Still, there’s enough meat and variation to this EP to make me interested in hearing her full-length album, and I think with some maturity and ditching the lyrical / structural crutches for more of the songs, Ms. Frye could be a totally rockin’ vagina artist.

(That originally just said artist, but I’m going with the sexist vibe here.)