By Laura Witkowski
One listen to Jennifer O'Connor is all it takes to turn your perception of "girl with guitar" upside-down. She makes unpretentious, hook-laden pop that wastes no time making a beeline straight for your heart. A warm voice with an unpretentious resonance, combined with an astute writing style, places O'Connor among today's best songwriters. Her Matador Records debut "Over the Mountain, Across the Valley and Back to the Stars" was a deeply personal record about the death of her sister and a painful break up. Her exceptional new album, "Here With Me," which dropped in August, focuses on a new relationship and adds musical depth to her sound while maintaining the intimacy that makes her music so gratifying.
How would you describe your sound?
My sound is kind of varied. I think I write and present very disparate styles of music because I like a lot of different types of music – quiet acoustic to rock-oriented and riff-based. It's kind of difficult, because it's not like one type of sound. I focus on making really good songs regardless of what genre they end up falling into.
The album cover of 'Here With Me' is really great. Tell me about it.
It's a photo of me and my girlfriend. I had a friend in the studio taking pictures during the recording session – my girlfriend Amy was there because she does some backing vocals and plays harmonica on record. A few weeks later, my friend came over to visit and brought us this photo in a frame as a gift and we loved it. Along with photography, she's also getting into graphic design. She e-mailed me a 'mock up' of an album cover using that same photo and said, 'I know you didn't ask me to do this, but thought I'd send it to you' and I was like, 'Oh my God, that's perfect!' We ended up using the design just as she sent it. It felt a little bit risky to me because I'm not not out, but I don't focus a whole lot on sexuality in my music. But I'm really excited about how it turned out and happy to talk about it.
You've said this album is 'mostly love songs.' But the album also seems to really hit on a lot of themes related to loss and heartbreak. Is it just me?
I think that's really fair. When I say love songs, there is a thread of this new relationship mixed with the aftermath of the last record's subject matter – it's been difficult dealing with that stuff. The song 'Here With Me' is about being with this new person, but also remembering these people who are gone. It's kind of a mix of emotions – the balancing of the two and trying to come to terms with both sides of that. A lot of what I write about isn't planned, and it's whatever is swimming around inside of me when I pick up a guitar. There's the whole questioning life and trying to stay positive in the context of a lot of the things happening in my life.
Jennifer O'Connor and The New Year
9 p.m. Oct. 16
Pike Room, Pontiac
