JESS VINCENT
Seesaw Dreams
HAT006
****
“Seems to be a Reg and Jess family industry here! Jess featured as guest vocalist on Reg Meuross’s new album, and they both guested as a harmony backing duo on Charlie Dore’s latest offering. This one is Jess’s solo CD, and she absolutely shines as a lead singer/songwriter; her unique soprano voice contains little-girl-lost traces, and there are brilliant flashes of Kate Bush in there as well. It’s soulful, strong and utterly engrossing, and Jess is her own mistress when it comes to song programming. She writes and arranges all her songs, with the exception of the traditional ‘Silver Dagger’ and three which she co-wrote with Reg – and he not only produces her album and contributes backing vocals and a load of instruments, but releases it on his label as well.
Jess stamps her feel-good personality from the joyous ‘Sail Away’, the opening track which deserves to be a stonking smash hit, to the last, bleakly beautiful ‘I Will Look For You’, written with Reg and which brings the album to a perfect end. Acoustic instruments abound, from the gentle plucking of Reg’s banjo, past the scintillating sound of Beth Porter’s ‘cello to Marcel Rose’s mandolin and fiddle. Jess duets with herself in a battery of gorgeous, breathtaking high harmonies, and she turns the whole thing into a carnival of the cool, with startling traditional influences spicing it up.
This is a rare, entrancing collection of fine songs which all CD buffs should treasure to the ends of the earth.”
