Karen Jonas: The Restless
Karen Jonas’ smoky, steamy and sultry voice serenades the darkest parts of your being. I don’t have enough platitudes to do this album justice. She’s clearly put the work in, paid her dues and this album undoubtedly should be placed high on top of the Americana chart.
Americana literary songsmith Karen Jonas’s sixth LP, The Restless (out Mar. 3), is a dark alt-country exploration of vulnerability. Each song is a confession that lands somewhere between nostalgia and doom. The Restless is a visceral experience: you can feel the “lace and velvet” and taste “the bite of bourbon” on your lover’s tongue.
Photo by Jennifer Manfre
The Restless is the absolute perfect companion when you simply need an escape.
This record changes everything for Karen Jonas. Her uncanny ability to set the scene, weave a story, and place the listener front row and center of it all, is simply marvelous. Her devilishly delicious lyrics full of double entendres is first class. Listening to the album, I can easily draw parallels to Joni Mitchell, Norah Jones and Susan Tedeschi.
If you need more, snuggle up with a delicious glass of cabernet and enjoy the whirlwind of raw unadulterated honesty. This album immediately captures your attention and holds on tightly throughout the torrid affair only temporarily loosening up as you flip the record over.
Jonas serves up 11 masterful tracks of intricately detailed first person vignettes that provide a powerful passionate punch along with a rollercoaster of emotion. The musicality is also top-shelf crazy good with Tim Bray and company sitting right in the pocket. They perfectly accompany Karen Jonas, ever so careful not to drown her out, yet absolutely delightful in their own right.
Feel free to listen to “Lay Me Down” and “Lay Me Down (acoustic)” to see if you can decide between the two. Your first time through you might prefer the whine, scream and howl of the guitar piercing straight through your heart like a dagger. Another time through, you might fall in love with the clean straight forward vulnerability and tenderness of Jonas’s voice. Either way you win!
I am always impressed when an album can be enjoyed from beginning to end instead of skipping straight to your favorite song and simply leaving that song on repeat. While I do have a few favorites and could easily listen to those over and over. I simply found that I preferred to stop at the end of the record, top off my glass of wine and start the album again from the beginning.
If pressed to select a favorite song, I would have to go with “Elegantly Wasted” as it starts off with a Tom T. Hall ”That’s How I Got To Memphis” sort of riff that commands your attention and is apropos to the quality storytelling contained throughout The Restless. It’s not the best song for sure, just my favorite.
Other songs worth a mention are “We Could Be Lovers,” “The Break Down” and “Throw Me To The Wolves.” My wife loves “Drunken Dreamer.”
This album is straight fire and my wonderful editor probably took out the three fire emojis.
Find out more about Karen Jonas below: