Honesty Bound
Tragic doesn't begin to describe the recent setbacks in singer/songwriter Jennifer O'Connor's personal life. First, her half-sister, Mari, died at age 41 in a car accident a few years back. Her sister, Heather, survived skin cancer, only to succumb this February to brain cancer at the age of 33. On top of all that, she ended a long-term relationship during the past year.
It's not surprising that the 32-year-old Connecticut native has addressed her personal loss in her new songs-this is territory ripe for a singer/songwriter to explore-but it's exceptional that she has done so without wallowing in self-pity and grief-ridden angst. She strums out simple, sparse and honestly reflective songs on her new disc, Over The Mountain, Across The Valley and Back To The Stars (Matador).
"I wrote it all last summer and then recorded it over the winter," she says. "All the songs are about a very specific time period in my life." For example, "I'll Bring It Home" was written for her sister while she was sick with brain cancer.
"I don't plan to write a specific song," she explains. "Whatever is going on in my head just subconsciously comes out. I think that's organically what happened: Things were swimming around in my brain and came out in my songs."
Comprehending her father's pain was the hardest part for O'Connor, so she relied heavily on empathy and observation to understand his sense of loss, which she captures in the song "Sister" about her sister Mari's death and how she and her father dealt with it.
Despite recent setbacks in her personal life, O'Connor's no slacker. Since earning an English degree from Emory University in 1995, she's worked at a used record store, performed with an Atlanta punk band called Violet, played solo open mic shows, worked in promotions at New York's Knitting Factory, moved to Tampa to record her debut, full-length CD (Truth Love Work), returned to New York to do two additional CDs and appeared at Austin's SXSW a year ago.
It's hard work to drum up an audience for songs about heartbreak and loneliness. At last for O'Connor, all that hard work has paid off with an album that manages to deliver excellent, heartfelt folk-pop songs from beginning to end.