Jenny Owen Youngs - Batten The Hatches

Jenny Owen Youngs looks like she might be another typical long-haired hippie waif with guitar; then she opens her mouth and your jaw drops. Her voice has that delicate, childlike quality that plagues many a folksinging female, but when she digs into a song the dissonance between her sweet alto and the acidic images she uses to paint her bittersweet portraits of life and love is startling. "Porchrail" opens the album with a backing band that sounds like the Violent Femmes. It's a simple acoustic rocker, with a swing feel that conveys the nervous energy that floods the body when you see someone you really want and probably can't have. The jittery beat and Youngs' pleading vocal create a mood of panting desire held in check by shyness and insecurity. "Fuck Was I" is a self-flagellating tale about being in thrall to a lover who can never do you any good, and in fact, is doing you a great deal of harm. And yet the love abides. Her matter of fact vocal and the song's lilting beat make her use of the F word actually sound shocking, something that's increasingly hard to do. (When this song was used on an episode of Showtime's Weeds, a dramedy about pot growing in the L.A. suburbs, it led to Youngs' current record deal with Nettwerk.) On "P.S.," Youngs plays the banjo in an arrangement with French horn, cello, bass clarinet, and foot stomps. It sounds kinda like a Tom Waits song, dripping with irony and full of unexpected musical touches. "Drinking Song" details the self-hate and confusion that lead to alcoholism, its dark lyric made bearable by a bright bouncy chorus and a lovely melody. Every song here uses the same basic formula -- dark thoughts set to uplifting music -- but it's a formula that works amazingly well. Youngs has an uncanny insight into the pains and insecurities that plague us all when we're in that vulnerable, confused position of wanting love and feeling unworthy, or wanting out of a relationship and being unable to cut loose from the obsession that makes the pain hurt so good. Youngs has an original voice and an ability to find light even in the darkest situations. It's hard to believe a work this polished and cohesive is only her first album.

- j. poet, All Music Guide