This is a bittersweet effort, Eliza Jaye, a former Moulette, seems to have lived a peripatetic life wandering wherever the fancy took her, joining bands and communities along the way for eclectic melodic adventures. When young she started with a violin but as a teen came across rock which seems to have put pay to a degree in opera. Cut to the chase, from down under she ended up in Brighton where she fell in with like minds and comrades. Sadly she died of cancer earlier this year. ‘Middle Child,’ is her legacy.
Returning to Australia and her family – when this set had been recorded- once she passed her friends swore they’d issue the album in some form. People like Joe Gibb, who produces, kept their word, the results stand as testament to a truly diverse artist who swings with Irish reeling one moment, the next mixing power pop and new wave: convincing across it all. Significantly the by line on her social media reads, ‘One woman, her Violin and Electric Guitar.’ Somehow that’s a pretty neat summation but I’d add there is a lot of Chrissie Hynde and Penelope Houston here as well.
‘Déjà vu,’ just reeks of the south of France, where it was in fact penned, ‘Espionage,’ is the sound of the Brill Building meeting a Highland jig, put it in the same slip stream as The Screaming Orphans. Closing, ‘’Take The Time,’ is uplifting, the lyric referencing the order of things and how little we appreciate what’s under our noses.
Recorded in Mumbles, Wales, Joe G, has crafted a spiritual piece of personal testament and melodic stomp, pure roots rock with vision. Eliza Jaye deserved so much more, though she left us on a high.
Simon Jones.
elizajaye.co.uk
