Rootsy California rock from transplanted Georgian
Transplanted Georgian Jennifer Whittenburg isn’t entirely comfortable with her adopted Los Angeles. Her music has the earthy country-tinged California rock sound of Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club, but her lyrics aren’t fully settled into the City of the Angels. She writes of harbored doubts and indecision in “Calif., You’ll Have to Wait,†and the city’s nocturnal lures nearly wear her out in “Using Me Up.†There are lights, music and bars in other cities, but the intensity of late-night Los Angeles threatens to unmoor and consume the singer. This contrasts with the opening “Tupelo,†in which Whittenburg seeks action in a “slow motion scene,†suggesting she’s not fully at-home at the other extreme, either. Having written these songs while she traversed Atlanta, Nashville and Los Angeles, the results do not naturally settle into any one place. The relationships of “Waitin’ on You†and “Oh Well†are in emotional limbo, and the seething anger of “Drink Up Buttercup†speaks to an ending that hasn’t been completed. Ironically, the album’s most decisive moment is found in the never-intended-to-be-kept promises of “One Night Stand.†The album’s lone cover is a relatively obscure Neil Young number, the fever-dream “L.A.,†from 1973’s Time Fades Away. Whittenburg’s voice suggests a rootsier version of Natalie Merchant, and with her band and producing partner Andrew Alekel, and friends like Wallflowers keyboardist Rami Jaffee, she’s waxed a solid rock album whose guitar, bass, drums and organ reach back to the early ‘70s, when rockers were exploring country and long-hairs were still frightening the Nashville establishment. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com] 