There's no way around it. I am a sucker for the modern, liberated female singer/songwriter. There is just something so intimate and endearing and respectable about an empowered woman sharing her heart in prose to a ripping acoustic guitar. It's kind of like when your lady friend sits you down for her daily unload of thoughts and worries – expecting you to offer no advice (as the very idea that a man can advise a woman is self-evidently offensive to no end), and to merely listen intently. For it is a gift – her heart, her being – that she gives: her words, they are what she is, at least at the moment – and you should appreciate it. "This guitar is my heart / pumps and pumps and never sleeps / it makes sure the rest of me survives … it will keep the song in me alive."
Lisa Loeb, Shannon Stephens, Jennifer Knapp, Sarah McLachlan, even Alanis Morissette – it is a tradition of feminine intellectual, spiritual, and emotional intimacy and assertion for the masses. And how much sweeter it is when the songstress can unload musically with skill and creativity on top of honesty and attitude.
Enter newcomer Jenny Moore. What is her place in this tradition? Like Morissette she jangles aggressively. Like Loeb she reflects uniquely. And like Jenny Moore, she tells her own stories in her own way, with a layer of delightful, telling rawness. Sometimes her lyrics and vocal emphases can seem a bit contrived, like she is trying too hard to fit into the tradition, into a preconceived box, as if she is unsure if her own voice is relevant enough. It is, though. Her voice, her stories – her character is relevant by virtue of its created existence. And the noticeable insecurities in presentation are probably not to be knocked, as they in themselves communicate something real. As real as her indignity over even being questioned in such matters. As real as her concern for others, like in the song "Evans" – " Your propaganda can shut me out but / you can't shut me down / your fear makes more sense than you can see." As real as her contrite, expecting faith– "Fall down from Your holy mountain / find us here / forgive us here / heal us here."
