Record Review: Jenny Owen Youngs – An Unwavering Band of Light

I have been looking forward to Jenny Owen Young’s latest album, AN UNWAVERING BAND OF LIGHT, for quite some time. But once she started playing songs from the new record during her StageIt shows, I have been desperate for it. It was pretty obvious that it was going to be fantastic. It did not disappoint. Exactly ten seconds into the new record, I had to stop what I was doing to spam Twitter and Facebook with how perfect it was.

Overall, the album demonstrates a new musical direction for JOY. The opening of “Love for Long,” is an assault of awesome with Elliot Jacobson’s intense drumming. “Pirates,” an early release from the album during live shows, does not disappoint in its studio version. Lyrically, this is classic JOY, mixing the childlike declaration, “We can be pirates” with the more serious suggestion, “or go somewhere private.” Musically, this is newer territory for JOY. The drums are loud and frenetic, and that is a staple for the early part of the record.

Jenny Owen Youngs – Pirates

The album still has some standard JOY ballads. The layered vocals, strings, and guitar in “O God” create a shimmering, and breathtaking effect. The record’s other ballad, “So Long,” begins with a somber piano intro. This is by far the record’s most lonely and heartbreaking track. The haunting harmonies on the song, over the words of sad, but inevitable change and longing for the past, are beautifully nostalgic: “No one can put you back how you were then/ Chemicals must react, it’s a certain/ So long.” Despite the fact that these songs are more familiar to the JOY we’ve always known and loved, she shows her growth as a songwriter both lyrically and in her arrangements.

Dreamy backwards ghost vocals ending abruptly with a staccato drum fill begin my favorite track of the record, “Already Gone.” She asks earnestly, “Did I overstay? You’re tugging your sleeves/ You said what they say: that I’m a disease/ and there’s no coming up when you come down with me.” These are some of JOY’s strongest vocals on the record and her voice is gorgeous over sweeping strings.

Another wonderful moment on the record come with the buildup on the lyrics, “I wake up great/ I wake up fine” on the closing track, “Wake Up” over skipping percussion and piano. The strings roll in and it is a stunning end to a wonderful record.

The title of the record alludes to a line Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Breakfast of Champions: “But the sacred part of him, his awareness, remained an unwavering band of light.” JOY exhibits this idea in her record, demonstrating beauty, tragedy, and glee in this phenomenal offering.