Review by Thom Jurek
Jana Hunter's debut album, Blank Unstaring Heirs Of Doom was a gentle yet psychedelically disturbing affair. It gave real weight to the term "freak folk." Its songs were wonderfully unnerving and as its titles suggests, often bleak. While the title of There's No Home doesn't make it sound like a much happier affair, musically the two sets couldn't be more different. This set, like its predecessor was recorded for Devendra BanHart's and Andy Cabic's Gnomonsong imprint, as a sophomore effort rings truer and stronger than her first. With skeletal help from brother John Hunter, John Adams (Fatal Flying Guilloteens), and Matt Brownlie (Bring Back the Guns), Hunter's songs, while slow, drawling affairs-she's a Texan and it was recorded there-are lighter, breezier, tighter and wittier. This is not to say she's become a pop singer. Hardly. She's still on the left side of the folk underground's divide, but the practice of her craft is more disciplined and her lyric writing is tighter if no less offbeat. There are 13 new songs here, all of them standing heads and shoulders above her debut-which was no slouch. The beautiful weave of voices in "Vultures" by Hunter, Brownlie, and Ashlynn Davies turns a leaving song into a real road song. There is no bottom dwelling sentiment anywhere. The droning lilt of "Movies," on which Hunter layers her own voice and guitars with Brownlie's synth, is an atmospheric interlude worthy of anything directed by Wim Wenders. "Regardless," is a moving, fingerpicked series of open strings and guitar knots. This is not to say that MS. Hunter's left all her darkness at the door. "Pinnacle," with its fuzzed up and droning guitars amidst the reverb-laden vocals and rumbling drums is creepy as hell, especially when followed by the guitar interlude that follows it. But "Oracle," brings it all back down to the roots of back porch, rock and roll folksy psych. "Sirens is a haunted and hunted lullaby and the title track is one of the more wistful heartbreakers to come out of the indie folk scene period. What it all adds up to is a nice step forward for Hunter. For those who find themselves lingering on the fringes after her debut, There's No Home is the greeting card to dive in with both ears and get your ears drenched in pleasure.
Jana Hunter
There's No Home
[Gnomonsong; 2007]
Rating: 8.0
Many listeners first became aware of Jana Hunter through her appearance on 2004's catalystic folk compilation Golden Apples of the Sun, curated by her friend and sometime collaborator Devendra Banhart. Not out of place for a neo-folk comp, her song "Farm, CA"-- a dark country-ish tune with haunting strings and lackadaisical acoustic guitar-- didn't fully intimate the depth and diversity of Hunter's songcraft and wise-beyond-her-years croon. Then she hit us with the dusky, dreamy full-length Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom. Similar in feel to Banhart's early lo-fi bedroom album Oh Me Oh My, and to a degree, CocoRosie's early ramshackle naiveté (minus the corn and bloated self-importance), the dimly lit, introspective, and cathartic nature of that excellent debut felt almost hermitic. Appropriately, the record also marked the launch of Gnomonsong, the label started by Banhart and Vetiver's Andy Cabic.
For her sophomore release, There's No Home, Hunter stands in the light, brings along a few friends, and seems ready to go emerge from her cave. The album opens with "Palms", a meditative invitation ("I open my hands to you/ I've showed you my palms/ I've showed you my soft skin for what it really was") wherein Hunter's breathy, long-held chorale-like voice reaches out to someone who she senses is nearby, but in fact, is "already long gone."
Hunter's tone quickly changes with the sassy second track "Babies", a tune evocative of Moon Pix-era Cat Power. One of Hunter's poppier numbers, its "bah bah bah" backing vocals are accompanied by bouncing drums while strings and guitars spiral around. It's also a great example of what makes Hunter's music so rich: Here, she tills a fertile bed of melancholy, only to yield colorful, joyful flowers. One contributing factor to the album's relative lightness-- like Blank Unstaring, it's pretty blue on the whole-- is the concise and fluid songwriting: Most of these songs are under three minutes.
The emotional complexity-- or rather, saddled contradictory feelings-- aren't all that set her apart from her peers: She also draws on influences from outside folk which, largely due to her finger-style treatment and accompaniment choices, wind up adhering to a folk template. For example, the excellent "Vultures" pairs a rhythmic, flamenco-like guitar part with syncopated drums, evoking a dusty desert highway. The country- and gospel-tinged "Bird", and the experimental "Pinnacle", add fusion drum flourishes, angular electric guitar bursts, and feedback drones that wouldn't sound out of place on a Ghost or Six Organs of Admittance record. "Recess" is a somber ballad akin to some of the Pretenders' saltier sad songs. And "Sirens", stylistically in line with numbers like "All the Best Wishes" and "The Earth Has No Skin" from her debut, is a ballad with minor-chord arpeggios and the waltz-like time-signature used in all those 60s girl-group breakup songs.
Hunter's winding melodies possess a mysterious déjà vu quality, like lost tribal folk hymns, and the captivating sense of mystery inherent in her voice, which is at once both husky and wispy, is enhanced by keeping the subject matter purposefully vague. She often employs the Björk-like lyrical conceit of using "it" to refer to some ambiguous source of discontent or exaltation. Once again, take the poetic "Vultures" ("I can feel my thoughts a circling like vultures do/ When it comes on/ Comes on so strong") or the reflective "Babies": "For many reasons I left my home/ Most of the reasons I still don't know." Which leaves us to guess, finding our own empathic reasons.
-D. Shawn Bosler, May 14, 2007
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