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junior years junior years is available to buy on line through Lauging Outlaw Records. Click here.. |
REVIEWS of junior years
Another winner from Laughing Outlaw
Reviewer: David Cowling
Americana UK, Wednesday June 11, 2007
The storming opener splices together the frayed ragged rock of the Replacements and the casual cool of the Velvet Underground, and when the chorus of ‘sweet sweet light’ chimes in you wonder why this marriage isn’t one that’s consummated daily. What sets her apart from most of the pretenders (apart from the lack of pretence) is the vocals, which sound so bruised that you imagine the words coming out purple turning to yellow as they penetrate deeply. You begin to root for her, so you listen closely, you’re on her side; the fact that ‘Trainwreck’ has a ragged sweet country rock noise to go along with this, is all the better.
She has a very good ear for a phrase, taking the everyday and refracting it so that ‘In Your Reflection’ compels; it is the poetry of gristle, words that don’t so much get stuck in your throat as in your teeth. The guitars too are meaty, with chewy riffs full of musical protein. There is a definite need to communicate, to work through things, with multiple references to violence, weapons and wounds, that and a compulsion about the measurement of things: ’30,000 feet up in the skies’, 495, ninety five minutes an hour’, ’40,000 metres into my love’. She sings and writes in a naked way paying little mind to conventional verse chorus verse structures.
What structure there is splits the record into a traditional side one and two, the first being much louder than the second, like an angry outburst followed by a slip into melancholic reflection. Side two opens with the most conventional song ‘Lost on a Winding Road,’ a duet that is spiritually Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle in a trailer park rather than Las Vegas, full of feeling, tears, resignation, love, hope and despair with a beautiful melody and excellent vocals – damn near perfect when you want to wallow in the miserly hand that fate has dealt you.
There is real quality here. It matters to her, it may be therapy, it is personal and all of the emotional effort invested pays off with interest. A superb female rejoinder to Ryan Adam’s Heartbreaker.
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Leisure Suit Studios, on the NSW central coast, where we recorded junior years |
Reviewer: Malcolm Carter
Penny Black Music June 11, 2007
Ex-member of Australian band Eva Trout, 35 year-old Sydney native Bek-Jean Stewart was last heard playing drums and adding her glorious backing vocals to her fellow Australian Perry Keyes 2005 album Meter.
On this, her solo debut, Bek-Jean not only fills the drum stool but plays guitar, harmonica and harmonium as well. Perry Keyes makes a welcome visit by adding vocals to one song, ‘Lost On The Winding Road’.
But despite sterling accompaniment by Grant Shanahan (the Catherine Wheel, Honeys), Matt Galvin, Eddie Kairouz and Warren Bright – and also one Mick Carpenter on lap steel. Could that be the king of all things melodic who usually goes by the name of Michael? – be in no doubt that this is Bek-Jean’s album and, not only does it fulfil the promise Stewart has shown in the past, it exceeds it.
A perfect 12 songs long (or short, in this case, it’s an album that you don’t want to end) it’s without a doubt the best album I’ve heard in many a month. It’s one of those rarities, an album that just gets better and better with each song.
"This record is for anyone who has loved and cried," Stewart writes in the liner notes; that’s just about all of us then. And there’s much here we can all identify with; songs that sound like old friends even on the very first play. It’s not hard to see where Stewart is coming from. The music she makes on this collection is very much in the Americana mould (why are Australians making the best Americana/country rock these days?) and although Stewart says her references for this album were Neil Young, Aimee Mann and The Replacements it must be said that this album can stand proud against the last few albums by Lucinda Williams. Maybe Bek-Jean won’t welcome such comparisons but it’s a fact; Bek-Jean Stewart, with this collection of songs, comes across as a younger Lucinda. That statement is made as the greatest compliment. It took Williams a good number of years and at least three albums before she received anything more than cult-status, with this solo debut Stewart has accomplished what it took Williams years to do. Namely make a classic album firmly rooted in Americana/country-rock.
Stewart is not really breaking new ground here, and apart from those Lucinda Williams influences shining through one can also hear strains of Ryan Adams; the title song, Junior Years recalls some of Adams’ best work. It could have been lifted from Heartbreaker, but again that’s a compliment. What Stewart is doing is making a claim for one of the best albums of 2007 so far. I’ve already listened to this album more times than I have Williams’s last release, it really is that good.
Bek-Jean wrote all the songs on this album and apart from showing that she knows how to write songs with melodies that will float around your head all day and have you singing along she also proves that she is a lyricist of some worth. Often there’s a bitter sting in her lyrics despite floating them on the prettiest of melodies at times. Never one to skate around an issue Stewart’s lyrics are hard-hitting and one is in no doubt that here is a woman who is carrying scars and is not afraid to point the finger at those responsible for doing her wrong.
Those stinging lyrics though would not be as effective if they were not delivered in Stewart’s rough-hewn vocals. It’s the perfect vehicle for these songs of hurt and longing; the sound of one cigarette too many, the damage from hitting that bottle just a little too often maybe, but it all adds up to the right sound for these songs.
This is a stunning solo debut and little else has had a chance in the CD player since it arrived. It’s an album where the cliché that it gets better with every play really does apply. By the time you get to the chiming guitars opening the last song, ‘Neck In Knives’ with Stewart singing that "You’re programmed into my headspace" you realise that the whole album is indeed so deeply embedded into your brain that all you will want to do is take the glorious trip that is Junior Years one more time . . . then one just another . . . then
another . . .
