Sarah Jaffe - The Body Wins

I saw Sarah Jaffe for the first time last year when she came through last Summer opening for the mighty Centro-matic and fell pretty hard for her breakthrough single Clementine. Backed by cello and insistently sparse backing, the track put Jaffe on the JS-NYC house system with good regularity. I saw the last couple times she made in through town, often with some semblance of Centro backing her and it was pretty obvious by the slowly growing crowds that words was getting out about the proud Texas daughter.

While there were flourishes previously, The Body Wins features bigger production (courtesy of John Congelton) and more pronounced electronic elements. Its a move that makes things a little more La Roux/Bad Seeds meets Gossip than previous, but also one that seems to place Jaffe in a position to get a lot of notice. There are a lucky thirteen tracks here, none of them even close to bad, so if the description above even mildly intrigues you, step lively to the Kirtland web presence and grab yourself a virtual or actual copy of The Body Wins before its on the tip of everyone's tongue.


R

Live: Sarah Jaffe @ Bowery Poetry Club 10.19.11

CMJ and pouring-ass rain are not normally the two great tastes that go great together. Frankly, CMJ has kind of blown the last couple of years, or more diplomatically I am aging out of the college demographic, but I got off my ass and ran out between deluges to catch Ms. Jaffe. I really enjoyed her opening for the Centro-matic a couple months ago and her debut Suburban Nature has received fair amount of play at JS-NYC.

Upon rolling in, I saw the end of a textbook reason why I'm way over the young people's music, read: two dudes, lots of Line 6 looping and/or delay, yelling, blah blah blah. Don't get me started on the haircuts. The Jaffe band was up in short order and wonderfully enough featured Scott Danborn on keys. Some tuning issues ate up the early part of the set, but once things got underway Jaffe sang the hell out of seven or eight Suburban Nature tunes, including the crowd-pleasing Clementine that set the young lesbian set in attendance into a tizzy. No real reason why Jaffe shouldn't be someone we'll be hearing big things from soon, save for the fact that there's no accounting for taste in this day and age.

In investigating links for you all, I'm intrigued to hear there is a new record out from Sarah. Get all the skinny here at the Sarah Jaffe web presence and look for a review soon.

R