Sally Jaye is one half of badass Americana duo Ladies Gun Club (alongside Sarah Roberts, who still contributed to this record), but she shows a more vulnerable, introspective and southern gothic storytelling side to herself on the first of a double EP package, ‘Too Many Heartaches’. The first, the one we’re considering here, dropped on December 2nd, while the second is expected some time in January. The reason behind such a decision lies in an unexpected pregnancy; the first EP was all that had been planned, and was recorded in a one week stint in Asheville, NC, because that’s all the budget allowed for. However, when Sally found out she was pregnant with her first child, she knew she had more songs to record before she closed one chapter and opened another, so she borrowed some money and jumped back into the studio with the same band. That week of recording contained a different energy so Sally decided to release it separately to the first group of sessions, both sides of ‘Too Many Heartaches’ following her debut album ‘Amarillo’, which is now some years old.
Acoustic, dark and rootsy, there’s something of an element of the Dixie Chicks and Patty Griffin in tracks like the opening masterpiece ‘Maggie The Superstar’, a complex story of a girl who runs away from her upbringing to become a superstar, but finds herself alone. Oftentimes Sally is the observant sympathizer, sadly looking on as people fall apart, and this takes particular precedence in ‘Shari’, from which the two EPs take their name, “You look like an angel but you’re walking like you had too many heartaches” (it should be noted this has the most brilliant chorus of the whole record). In ‘All I Ask For’, too, she shows her literary ambition with a haunting tale of a family torn apart by tragedy and how they deal with the aftermath, and as the musical undergrowth grows around the powerful lyric, we get a sense of how Sally Jaye has long been the best kept secret of songwriters’ rounds. When she’s not slowly unveiling the complicated mess of others’ lives, she’s penning first person tropes that explore the nature of relationships and the human condition, such as the 1950s-style ‘Leave You Alone’ and we believe every tear-stained word and quivering vocalization.
Even though it could easily be said that Sally Jaye is inspired by classic and traditional country, she drifts from the stereotypical simplicity that the lyrics of such songs often require. Instead, her stories and turns of phrase are clever (without being too flowery or over-the-top), and often her songs require a few listens to really pick out some of the true meaning, resulting in them being fairly open to interpretation. The advantage of that is that such an approach is listener-focused; each individual can take what they want from the song, involving themselves and allowing themselves to get caught up in it all. Indeed, while the duet with husband Brian Wright on ‘Paper Mache’ is more focused in terms of their singing to each other, the lines can appear like snapshots, vignettes, small discarded remnants of what once was a detailed narrative, and it’s this style that seems to come so wonderfully natural to Sally. She often doesn’t need to lay every event out step-by-step because making things more sporadic takes more talent and is a lot more fun.
The EP comes to a close on Townes Van Zandt cover, ‘At My Window’. Reflective, relaxing and thoughtful, Sally’s rendition is delicate and an appropriate end to an extremely well-written but desperately sad collection of material. Although the lyric is subdued, there is a sense of wonderment and hope interwoven that captures the calm after the storm. If these six tracks are anything to go by, the next record in January is going to be a fabulous piece of work with songwriting that is way too underappreciated for its quality. Everyone reading this should download ‘Too Many Heartaches, Pt 1’, because if you complained at all in the past year that country music was on its deathbed, then it’s your duty to listen to this.
