CD Reviews

Jaymay

Autumn Fallin' | Blue Note

By MIKAEL WOOD | March 4, 2008

2.0 Stars

“Where’s my morning coffee?”, Jaymay wonders in “Sea Green, See Blue,” a cut from the New York–based singer-songwriter’s major-label debut. To judge by the decidedly sleepy sound of Autumn Fallin’, the caffeine never came: though these 10 warmly produced folk-pop ditties provide a detailed play-by-play of a Big Apple romance, Jaymay’s music seems less informed by the tumult of public life in New York than by the search for calm all New Yorkers know. As her labelmate Snorah Jones has proved several times over, that’s fertile artistic and commercial source material, and when her writing is at its best here — as in “Blue Skies,” where she faces the truth that “there will always be unkind people” — Jaymay (born Jamie Seerman) comes off as a much wiser soul than her 26 years might suggest. But like Jones’s records, Autumn Fallin’ isn’t without its well-intentioned dull stretches, when all the acoustic strumming and low-key vocals and lyrics about falling for the wrong guy vague out into an anonymous coffeeshop background blur. At those points, you wish Jaymay would open the door and let in some rank city air.

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