- There are some comeback stories in the music industry that go beyond the usual popular once for a short while, then vanished, a big revival single or album release that extends the career and finally, live happily ever after (Take That springs to mind). Others like blues maestro Long John Baldry spent a good portion of the 1970s living with mental health problems and was sectioned, coming back (and coming out officially as gay) with an album titled Baldry’s Out and an Australian Top 3 hit “You've Lost That Loving Feeling”; and for those playing “Blair’s Eurovision Song Contest Bingo”, Monika Kuszyńska who represented Poland at Vienna 2015’s edition survived a serious car accident in 2006, partially paralysed from the waist down and now uses a wheelchair, which proved a small challenge for the producers of that year’s contest.
Jessica Venables aka Jessica Says suffered a similar happenstance. After releasing her first album in 2009, she was badly injured in a fall from a hotel window the following year. Long rehabilitation followed and she trained as a nurse and now works as a mental health professional. Last year she created a stir with the album Do With Me What U Will and this year takes a turn toward introspection and brings a compact EP release Downers with four similar, yet differing songs. They frame her girl-child voice and it always seems to be on the verge of cracking and breaking from the emotion of the tune and the lyrics hanging off that tune.
The first song Paracetamol is a direct response to her work in a mental health care ward, where she witnessed an increasing number of cases of attempted suicide during the overdose of the modern world’s universal pain relief medication. Her lyrics don’t judge those who seek that pathway, but the system and society that created the reasons behind that choice. The other three songs Brand New Thing, Baby Is A Nihilist and Boy Angel all have differences in lyrical content (naturally) yet they are threaded together like a teen’s friendship bracelet by the production of Evelyn Morris with Says playing a sparse, tinkly piano and her first instrument, the cello, which comes into its own on Boy Angel with a slightly unhinged sound crossing The Beatles with the Electric Light Orchestra via some mid-'80's The Cure.
Definitely an EP to listen to on a crisp winter’s afternoon or cradling a hot beverage of some sort in a room lit by a warming fire, Says has the mood of an early Kate Bush as well as Brisbane alumnus Kate Miller-Heidke. While it’s hard to be faux-upbeat about a release which directs its attention toward the subject of overdoses, obsessive crushes and the debilitating effects of mental illness, Says' Downer is a little piece of brightness that could shed light into some very dark places.
- Blair Martin.