Ohio singer’s lyrics weighed down by heavy arrangement
Ambiance is an essential part of Ohio-born singersongwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield’s music.
Her breakthrough second album, “Tell Me,” was rich with character and mood, most of it the product of her vocals and the arrangements.
It evoked the classic 1960s country pop of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood.
During Mayfield’s short set Wednesday night in the Rumba Café, though, the thick-as-mud musical atmosphere got the best of her songs.
It didn’t fall far from the sound of last year’s “Sorry Is Gone” album, but it lent a lethargy to the set list that spoke best for just the darkest, most vindictive songs from an album full of pain.
“WTF” — “white trash fighting, obviously,” she translated — was driven by her thickly chorused electric guitar, which produced a reverberating wall so thick that her vocals struggled to poke through.
The spiteful lyrics and the melody of the song were lost. (Upgrades to the club’s acoustics and sound system in recent years pose no obstacle to clear, sharp sound, as evidenced by the mix for the opening band.)
There were songs, especially from the new album, whose storylines and emotional content fared well with the sound, though. On “Safe 2 Connect 2,” one of several that Mayfield delivered without the rhythm section, the thick, ominous mood reinforced the harrowing evaluation of a dangerous contemporary social climate. “Bum Me Out” rose to its vengeful self.
Well into the set, the classic, irrepressible melodies of a few songs showed what might have been in a more widely nuanced performance, in which the compositions carried weight equal to the arrangements.
The resignation in “Maybe Whatever” rode its fetching melody; “I Wanna Love You” and “Blue Skies Again” both embraced a romanticism with their tunes, if from different points of view.
It didn’t help that Mayfield’s stage presence was lugubrious and distracted, especially coming after Mal Blum and the Blums, who opened with a garrulously delivered, energetic set of rock ‘n’ roll.