Andrea Myers at City Pages doesn’t care for the new Mason Jennings album, In The Ever. But Seattle blog Sound on the Sound answers any and all critics with, “Mason Jennings doesn’t play music to be cool. He plays because he has something to say.”
I’ve never listened to his music until now, so my experience of In The Ever is totally fresh.
Coming off his 2006 major-label effort, Boneclouds, Jennings decided to retreat to a studio in the woods, where he set himself up with a laptop and two microphones. The title comes from his son talking about where he came from before he was born, “Ya know dad, when I was in the Ever?”
“It was pretty raw, but fun, because that’s how I grew up working,” says Jennings about the recording process for In the Ever. “I wanted to do it quickly in a childlike way. I’d write songs in the morning, record them in the afternoon and finish them up by night.”
I tend to like my folk a little rougher around the edges, but I’ve been listening to this record over and over in my truck. It’s habit forming, and that’s lofty territory for any artist.
[MP3 Offering] “Fighter Girl” from In The Ever