Kara Jackson’s releases have distinctly arresting titles. They are sweeping and epic: first the EP ‘Songs For Every Chamber of the Heart’ and now the LP ‘Why Does The Earth Give Us People to Love’ and it is this wide scope but narrow gut punch that defines the former Youth Poet Laureate’s music, leaving no chamber unexplored. This process is absolute and methodical; in the video for ‘no fun/party’ she pulls out her own heart, her rich voice implying that the listener must do the same.
Her charismatic vocals climb precipitous heights and swoop with poignancy, the listener has no choice but to follow for fear of missing a single beat. There’s a familiar lilt to her melodies and rhyming patterns, sometimes reminiscent of Laura Marling and coming from a similar roster of singer-songwriter influences. However where the female singer-songwriters were obliged to accommodate an audience who sat with folded arms, Jackson abandons benign sweetness in favour of harsh dissonance, a different and darker representation of the adoring, faithful woman. The lyrics show the importance of self-worth by focussing on emancipation from toxic relationships, the “dickhead blues” attempting to compromise it. In the eye of the storm, Jackson stares directly at the listener from the album cover, something accusatory in it as she sits surrounded by flowers attempting to grow in isolation.
Separate from an age of jittery content saturation, Jackson’s blunt authority exists as much in the negative space, confidence to pause for thought and trace each word to come meticulously, as it does in the disarming lyrics. She trusts that the listener has the patience to hang on tight to every word and bridge the gaps with their own thoughts, expects full engagement in a fierce claim to the space she deserves, stating “I am pretty top-notch” in a refrain powerful through its modesty, a realistic mantra for the masses.
