Jessie Monk – Here, Now
Independent – 26 February 2021
The Australian songstress Jessie Monk has spent the last couple of years travelling – living in an intentional community in Israel and moving to Berlin a year ago. Her debut EP ‘Here, Now’ is a synthesis of old school folk, love and heartbreak in the 21st century, and beautifully crafted instrumental arrangements. Jessie sounds like Joni Mitchell’s long-lost daughter, with her effortless dance between the higher and lower registers of her voice, witty lyrics, and folky guitar strums.
The opening track Maybe in Another Life pulls the listener into a heart-wrenching story about a love you can’t have with a strong nod to Joni Mitchell’s Conversation. “You got up and asked for the bill/ Showed me a void you wanted me to fill”, Jessie sings, and when the backing vocals chime in, the song takes on a life of its own. It pushes and pulls, culminating with an interplay between Sebastian Hoch’s harmonica and Denise Dombrowski’s violin, while Jessie’s vocals soar over the melody. Aidan Lowe’s sparse percussion never interferes but gently supports the song.
In Dark Café, Jessie Monkcarries on with the folk storytelling tradition that feels as familiar as the bed of a lover you’ve been with for too long, which is fitting for the theme. “But she’s scared of who she’ll be without the safety of her fears/ So she goes back to the cafe and she spends a few more years/ With her tears”, Jessie sings about the main character. The song cries with yearning and restlessness.
It’s in Lonesome Winter Blues that Jessie’s songwriting prowess comes into its own, and unfolds as a style that couldn’t belong to Joni Mitchell or any other folk singer. The lines “So if tomorrow/ We change our minds/ I won’t be down with sorrow/ This love was only ever ours to borrow” capture the essence of Jessie’s music – taut, ephemeral, and no one’s to own. Paul Santner’s double bass pulsates with playful ease, while the plaintive violin rises and falls like a leaf carried by the wind.
Turns Out I’m Someone Else is stripped-back, featuring only a double bass and Jessie’s guitar and vocals. It’s exposed and raw, laying bare most young women’s fears, and her words hit you with a pang of recognition in the lines: “So I watch the strangers in the park/ Breathing in the city air/ Looks like I’m still afraid of the dark/ But I’m really gonna try and stop looking for love everywhere”. Towards the final notes, Jessie’s voice breaks free, sounding like Snow White serenading birds in the forest.
When the closing track Here, Now comes in, it vibrates with a mystical gravity, making the listener unable to focus on anything but the singer-songwriter’s hypnotic vocals. Jessie remembered how, after writing Here, Now, it felt like she’d “just been to the stars and grabbed a secret”, and that’s what this EP feels like – like being offered a drop of songwriting magic. The record lets you sit in the expanse of Jessie’s wonder, pain, joy, and fear until you realise that she’s really singing about universal truths.
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Photo Credit: Jamie Graham