Lead singles have an essential job, especially when teasing the audience and testing the sonic waters ahead of a debut album. But if recent singles, “In The Key of Chaos” and “Just For One Night,” seem to speak of the sonic scope of Jess Yaffa‘s first full-length album, I am here to tell you that is only a fraction of the story.
If the former is a composed and poised pop number, the latter pushing into groovesome yet accessible rock realms, these are just snapshots of the whole affair.
“Too Soon” is the epitome of pop-rock, able to blend the contagion of one and the groove of the other, “Midnight” wanders into beguiling blues but then explodes in dance-fueled, neo-soul and “Too Much Never Enough” is a rootsy pop-waltz pulling at folk finesse and country cool whilst hitting balladic pop heights.
It’s a fantastic first move and mission statement, and I can’t be the only one who hears an echo of Nerina Pallot‘s groundbreaking second album Fires, an album that similarly took sonic threads from all over the musical landscape and wove them into genre-hopping songs that beat with a pop heart. That album put Pallot on the map; I’m pretty sure Thoughts That Keep Me Up at Night will do the same for Jess Yaffa.
