Jenny Owen Youngs
Batten The Hatches

THE REVIEW

What is a sarcastic girl dressed as a schoolgirl, drunk, doing on stage at a pub in front of about twenty people? She sings that beautiful piece with the "significant" title of "Fuck Was I", because she is Jenny Owen Youngs from New Jersey and she's "Singing Sweet And Drinking Hard Since 1981".

Gifted with a very clean voice (with very jazzy nuances), our girl offers us an indie pop singer-songwriter style imbued with very measured folk, often filled with contrasts ("Lighting Rod", "Voice On Tape"), much more often with irony towards herself and relationships with the opposite sex. Nothing particularly transcendental, also because at several points it will seem like you're listening to a much more relaxed Cat Power with fewer issues, but fortunately, it stops long before plagiarism, as the girl already has a well-defined personality.

Consisting of 10 tracks, almost all set in the style of intimate ballads, with slow tempos, guitar and voice, no rhythm section, "Batten The Hatches" is a debut work that flows a bit too smoothly, but manages to offer some surprises. Absolutely essential is the aforementioned "Fuck Was I", freely downloadable from the artist's website: an irresistible waltz-timed ballad, where the strings create a truly delightful suspended atmosphere, while the words depict an interpersonal situation I would euphemistically call "complicated".
Also very beautiful are "Bricks", "Woodcut", and "Keys Out, Lights On" where the trumpet adds that jazzy flavor that evokes the city lights late at night.
The lyrics are generally quite inspired, fresh, and ironic, conveying a certain sincerity that certainly works in favor of our drunken girl, even if they belong to the genre "me, the world, you and all the others". In conclusion: "Fuck Was I" alone is worth 5 stars, the rest of the album a 3.5. We'll keep an eye on her as she has the potential she demonstrates to have.