Jenny Gunn

Cat no: JGN CD 01

**

Unclassifiable set of songs from ‘quirky’ American singer/songwriter

At the moment, there is an abundance of female singer-songwriters who don’t fit easily into one category. This is no new thing and with Joni Mitchell it has been hard to categorise the folk/jazz style of many the new inhabitants of this genre. Now along comes Canadian Jenny Gunn. Jenny grew up in a small community in Canada’s Ottawa Valley and was given her first guitar when she was 13 by her father who gave her the task of learning three chords before she was allowed to keep it. Jenny now feels the time has come to produce her first CD, based on many of the songs she has written over the years leading up to this event. Jenny regards herself as a poet who sings. This is rather unfortunate as she seems to have by-passed the great North American poets such as Robert Frost and even Bob Dylan but plumped for the most famous US Poet of all—Dr Zeuss. She strives for a rhyme in each line which is fine but in time starts to grind so you find that in time like this line, not sublime. There is even a dreadful spoken poem Bigger, Faster, Stronger which, I think, is supposed to satirise the ‘rat-race’ but is so mind-numbingly banal that I switched off half-way through. Then again there is the songwriting. Keeping in line with her ‘quirky’ image Gunn tries to surprise with unexpected chord changes. This is especially shown in the satirical Hi Heels which lapses from major to minor in a frankly haphazard way which really just doesn’t work. Given that over the past few years reviewing for Maverick I have heard some fantastic British female singers who have all the talent and more but just seem to disappear then there is no room in my record collection for this. Spring is just around the corner and our hearts long to burst with joy. My personal joy is that once I’ve finished this review I’ll never have to listen to this pretentious, unmelodic, painful CD again. Sorry. KM

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