Jess Klein
Austin, Texas, United States | SELF
Music
Press
Jess Klein is one of the most interesting singer/songwriters I know. She has had two distinct periods of musical activity. The first began on the heels of the Lilith Fair tour, which launched the careers of many solo women musical artists and women-led bands. The second emerged following a period of difficult life-changing experiences including the death of a parent, the breakup of a major relationship, and the shift from a major recording label to an independent one. Klein's newest recording, Behind a Veil, comes out of the latter phase of her career.
The great news is that Jess Klein is back with an album full of beautifully written tunes in that distinctive, captivating voice. She's relocated from Boston to Austin, and has taken full advantage of some of the musical talent that part of the country is known for. Produced at Austin's Aerie Studio by musician, producer and songwriter, Mark Addison, the recording places Klein's voice front and center, where it belongs.
The CD opens with the stirring anthem, Behind a Veil. The bass and percussion-driven production is confident and sure. Klein's voice is strong in her declaration that she is a survivor in a "world fallen apart…where the devil and his dogs, or the angels wait for you." I think Klein has a little of both on her side.
Tell Me This is Love is a rocker about holding onto love while it is slipping away. Billy Masters and Mark Addison are superb on guitar. This one is both radio and iPod friendly.
Simple Love sums up some of the best things about this recording. It's got that unmistakable voice drawing you in, and it's got a story to tell that is both straight forward and deep at the same time. The lyrics are so good you wish you could have written them yourself:
All the hours I spent so lost
All the years counting the cost
Don't I know it's a coin toss, this life?
It's not easy to sum up a romance in a few words, but Klein does it here. This is one of the freshest ballads I have heard in a long time.
Mona has a beautiful melody and some stunning backing vocals by Wendy Colonna and Noelle Hampton. It talks about how love can be painful and how it can change your life. And…it talks about the kind of love that can haunt you and cause you to question everything about it except the power it holds over you.
If Jess Klein continues to write and produce material as strong as every song on Behind a Veil, she's got a long and prosperous career ahead of her. Listening to Klein sing is one of the singular pleasures in life. She has that unique ability that few singers have—to make you feel as if she is singing directly to you with an intimacy and familiarity of someone close. There is a pureness and authenticity to her voice that reaches in and grabs you from the very first note, and does not let go. Jess Klein is back with a group of songs worth hearing, worth knowing, worth playing again and again. With Behind a Veil, the veil is lifted and an artist emerges.
- Acousticmusic.com
Jess Klein is not one of the more popular female singer/songwriters in pop, but she is arguably one of the most consistent and skilled. For well over a decade, the former Bostonian has put out one artfully written and beautifully sung record after another. Her most recent, “Behind a Veil,” (Motherlode) is a remarkably assured and affecting set of 10 songs. Klein has a sensual, soulful voice and there are few singers who can express yearning (the terrific “Wilson Street Serenade”) and vulnerability with this kind of immediacy. The songs are fully realized, finely observed, and deeply felt. There is no better song this year about the ache of a breakup and the need to start over than “A Room of Your Own.”
All the tracks are deftly arranged and when she wants to rustle up some dust (“Lovers and Friends”) she hauls out the electric guitars and brings it with power and style. Klein works with a first rate ensemble including multi-instrumentalist Mark Addison and guitarist Billy Masters and the playing alternates between appropriately brisk to subtle and nuanced.
This is not the kind of disc marked by filler and dead spots. Each song feeds the other and as Klein meditates on relationships, and identity, she reveals layers about our lives and how we love. This, folks, is how it’s done.
- CapeCodOnline
Jess Klein
Behind a Veil
(Motherlode Records)
Running the gamut between heart-wrenching laments and sassy shout-outs, Jess Klein’s latest effort shows why she ought to be Americana’s next big thing. Klein possesses one of those indelible voices that that can go from a sultry rumble to a plaintive wail even while grabbing attention on first encounter. It embosses these tunes with an urgency and emotion that makes such songs as “Mona” and “Behind a Veil” both vulnerable and vivacious. Tender ballads like “A Room of Your Own” and “Wilson Street Serenade” are the sort of thing that a singer can pin a career on, embossed with a bittersweet sadness that rings with universal appeal, the kind every lost lover can obviously relate to. There’s also a hint of Bonnie Raitt and Lucinda Williams in her cries of recrimination, but clearly Klein is way too good to be tied to common comparisons. An excellent album – a career-maker in fact – Behind a Veil ought to lift the curtain and bring her success.(www.jessklein.com)
- No Depression
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
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Bio
"I pulled no punches on this album," Jess Klein says of her new album Learning Faith. "It's edgy and brutal, but it was inspired by a genuine love for this world."
Learning Faith —which marks Klein's third collaboration with veteran producer Mark "Professor Feathers" Addison—boasts ten personally-charged new originals that rank with her most compelling and illuminating work. Such bracing tunes as "Surrender," "So Fucking Cool," "Wish," "Long Way Down" and "If There's A God" (which she was inspired to write after protesting in support of State Senator Wendy Davis' pro-choice 2013 filibuster at the Texas state capitol building) embody the complementary mix of personal fearlessness and musical craftsmanship that define Klein's music.
"It felt a little different this time," the artist notes. "It was the first time that I ever went into a record really feeling that I'd paid my dues, and that now I'm just gonna do and say whatever I want. I finally feel like I really don't care what anybody thinks now. That felt huge, and it felt really empowering. I felt comfortable going as dark as I could, and not feeling like I had to pull back from that.
"It's also the first time I've started a record with a concept and tried to follow it through," she explains. "After I wrote the song 'Learning Faith,' that started me thinking about writing a whole album of songs about the process of developing faith—faith in people, faith in the universe, faith in a higher power. I wanted each song to be about some kind of struggle with faith, and asking what faith really means to me.
Learning Faith's rich emotional and musical palette is consistent with the level of commitment that Jess Klein has always brought to her music. The Rochester, NY native taught herself to play her father's acoustic guitar in her teens, and began writing songs as a college student in Kingston, Jamaica. After graduation, she relocated to Boston, where she began performing locally and won acclaim for her self-released debut album Wishes Well Disguised. The attention helped to win her a deal with the Rykodisc label, for which she recorded the albums Draw Them Near and Strawberry Lover, which were warmly received by critics as well as Klein's growing audience.
Since parting ways with Rykodisc, Klein has continued to stake out brave new lyrical and musical territory on such albums as 2006's City Garden, 2009's Bound to Love and 2012's Behind A Veil.
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