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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2009 > June > 15 > Entry
CD Review: Sarah Jarosz, “Song Up in Her Head” (Sugar Hill)
Rebecca Scoggin McEntee FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sarah Jarosz
“Song Up in Her Head” (Sugar Hill)
A-
Here’s something you don’t see every day: A co-production credit for a young woman who not yet 18 when this album was recorded last year.
Then again, a Sarah Jarosz doesn’t come along all that often, nor do you hear debuts as self-assured yet filled with room for growth, as “Song Up in Her Head.” (For the record, Prince was 19 when he recorded his debut, “For You.”)
The Austinte/ Wimberly gal has been playing the Old Settler’s Music Festival for years and was signed by Sugar Hill after a set at Colorado’s Telluride Festival in 2007. This is the real deal we’re looking at, eleven originals and two covers (a hypnotic version of the Decemberists’ “Shankill Butchers” that destroys the original and a pass at Tom Waits’ “Come On Up to the House”) that reveal a sophistication that’s striking for a woman of her age.
Journeys and leave-takings fill the detailed songs, blending traditional bluegrass chops with a sound both progressive and traditional: “Public transportation’s my private ride, yeah/ but I’ve found my wings and I’m ready to fly.”
Jarosz plays mandolin and clawhammer banjo, opening the album (and the title track) with an almost Dylan-esque image: “The Virgin Mary/all dressed in blue/sings ‘My First Lover’/ for an audience of two.” The ballad “Edge of a Dream” takes stock: “Almost eighteen a real lady now, I’ll keep tryin to figure this life out.”
The instrumentals “Mansinneedof” and “Fischer Store Road” bob and weave, Jarosz and mandolin player Mike Marshall locking up and spinning off in the former, Jarosz putting her clawhammer banjo up against dobro god Jerry Douglas in the latter.
Nobody should be all that surprised if we’re listening to the next Alison Krauss. Or maybe Prince.
“Song Up in Her Head” is released nationally Tuesday.
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