The Air Is Thin

I'm a little late on this one, but I picked up the new Jesse Sykes album "Like, Love, Lust, & The Open Halls of the soul" a couple weeks ago. I got it on the strength of an MP3 of LLL I got a couple months ago and given my track record recently (lily allen, bloc party) I was a little nervous about it.

No worries though, as I thoroughly enjoy the whole thing.

The cepia-toned cover and insert gives a pretty good representation of the sound inside as the entire album has a lazy, melancholy vibe for an album of solid folkish-rock in a seventies vein.

"The Air Is Thin," with its hint of melancholy about it, makes good use of trumpet and choir to build to a finish that is triumphant and yet still retains an air of sadness. Similarly "Station Grey" starts mellow and builds into more of a rocker (kind of) that is one of my favorites

"How Will We Know" has a kind of loping Neil young feel about it that makes good use of her backing band The Sweet Hereafter's guitarist.

Interestingly though the songs are relatively compact, most being in the 4-5 minutes range, they have a stretched out feel to them and they seem to develop organically as the song goes along its course.

It's a great album for these end of winter blues, but I feel like it might be a great album into the summer as well.