Above all, don’t be fooled by the first piece: a very approximate piano with an insecure voice, as if the singer were drunk. One minute and ten seconds later, you’re on your way to a poetic and musical universe out of the ordinary.
Kara Jackson grew up in Oak Park, near Chicago, a rare American suburban town that is multiracial and intended as such. At the age of nineteen, she won the National Young Poet Award. Here she is, embracing music without neglecting poetry.
The musical framework is surreal: from fairly simple guitar chords, always in fingerstyle, a crazy instrumentation is woven, made up of rising strings, brass, Pedal Steel guitar, synths and sometimes distorted electric guitars. It all adds up to a highly effective, almost theatrical atmosphere.
Kara Jackson is twenty-five years old, but to hear and read her, you’d think she had the experience of Joni Mitchell. In fact, her rather deep voice is reminiscent of the older Joni. Early maturity?
The title track, “Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love,” is a funeral ode to her best friend, who died too soon of cancer. On “Dickhead Blues,” she has a few cutting words for one of her exes. Lyrically, the young poetess doesn’t pull any punches.
This is an album to be listened to with headphones, to grasp its depth and sensitivity.
My story as an aging privileged white man has nothing to do with that of an extremely gifted young black artist.
I found this album simply overwhelming.
