An invitation. Put “Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love?” on and close your eyes, abstract yourself from the idea of what song is playing and concentrate for a moment on Kara Jackson’s voice. The feeling that the singer-songwriter is nearby is dizzying, but something else will stand out, the vocal register, somewhere between spoken word and the mood of someone performing in a comedy special. The latter is born from a combination of Kara’s register and writing, flowing with the ease of orality, disregarding song conventions or even expectations of what it is and where it should go. In part, does this mean that Kara Jackson is funny?
But humour is part of it, it’s an escape, an insecurity that manifests itself unpredictably in this singer-songwriter format. Humour can also be confessional – or falsely confessional, to divert attention – and that’s the beauty of Kara’s first full-length, released last year: there’s a gap between our expectations of what we think her music should be and what it actually is. For example, “pawnshop” invites you to immediately think of Joni Mitchell: homage, influence? Maybe something else, as Kara Jackson’s blues is miles away from what we consider blues. There is another path here, the passage of time, the visit to the genre by way of change. But change ignores tribute, respect, and goes its own way. If there’s anything to take away from Kara Jackson, just over twenty years old, from Chicago, it’s that she’s here to change something. As Angel Bat Dawid, Circuit Des Yeux and Julia Holter have been at other times, with the appropriate distances and motivations. What he’s doing now is exceptional, between truth and lies, illusion and confession and, above all, a real desire to raise alarm about the need to live the music of the present with the rules of the music of the present. This is the new blues. AS
