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In many ways, the singer-songwriter has become a cliché. Maybe it’s too easy - pick up an acoustic guitar, pen a few flowery lines about heartbreak, add some recycled melodies, and voila! Thankfully, Sarah Jaffe breaks that mold. At 6 songs and 21 minutes, Even Born Again, Jaffe’s proper debut and produced by the Paper Chase’s John Congleton, is a mini-masterpiece. The Denton artist’s mournful melodies are wholly original yet comfortably familiar and every element of the EP, from the unique vocal delivery to the haunting strings, is emotionally gripping in all the right ways.
The down-strummed chords of the album’s opening title track immediately call to mind Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea — another brilliant band that, like Jaffe, transcended their folky aesthetic to create something more artistic and meaningful. The song’s spiritual undertones come out with Jaffe’s powerful delivery of lines like: “Be easy with your words and truth / If I’m lost with God I’m lost with you.” Even Born Again is a love story told under a cataclysmic religious backdrop. “Black Hoax Lie” is a bouncier folk-pop song in which Jaffe’s voice takes on a Karen O. quality as she belts out, “I’m living a black hoax lie / wherever you left me that’s where my heart still lies.”
“Adeline”, “Backwards / Forwards”, and “Two Intangibles Can’t Be Had” have a similar stripped down, intimate-acoustic aesthetic, reminiscent of New York songwriter Nina Nastasia - arpeggiated guitars and vocals that go from whispers to stabbing howls. “Under” is a dark, fuzzed-out, blues song with a bare Velvet Underground rhythm. It is the weakest track on the EP, but one that demonstrates Jaffe’s stylistic range.
With Even Born Again, Sarah Jaffe illustrates that she can reconcile her artistic vision with her catchy stick-in-your-head melodies, without compromising either. At times, her songwriting borders on brilliance. However, there is a feeling that she can and, in the future, will go farther. Perhaps that is the sign of a great record - it leaves the listener wanting to hear where the artist will go next.
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