Jemima Farey
Album: Good Days
Label: Barn Door
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.barndoorrecords.co.uk

Jemima's a determinedly focused (and seriously talented) 17-year-old hailing from the beautiful Blackdown Hills region near the Somerset-Devon border; she describes herself on her plain-spoken and clear-sighted press handout as a folk/country musician. You'd be hard pushed to guess her age from listening to this album, though. Jemima has grown up surrounded by a musical family; her father Jonathan, going under the name of Dusty Barns, is a multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter in his own right and runs a recording studio, also performing with his wife Maria and their four daughters (Jemima being the eldest) as a unit called The Farey Family.

So Jemima's been brought up listening to the Carter-Cash family, Hank Williams, Eva Cassidy et al; thus it's perhaps to be expected that her own writing should be influenced by these role models and principally embrace the classic themes of family, companionship, loved ones and cherished places: songs we can all relate to, with time-honoured and heartfelt sentiments. To express which, Jemima's blessed with a magnificent singing voice that soars most confidently - almost frighteningly so, in fact, so closely does she make us identify with her and her songs' messages. Jemima has clearly learned much from the examples of key craftsman-songwriters of country-folk, although there are some tell-tale signs that she has still much to learn - for instance, very occasionally coy and/or self-conscious moments within her lyrics, also a tendency to stretch out, mostly in the sense of not quite knowing when to stop perhaps (I note that all but two of the songs on the album clock in at over 4½ minutes), and her guitar style, though pleasing, is still at times quite rudimentary. But there's a genuine insight in Jemima's writing, allied to an equally genuine and unforced passion for her subject, a passion which is very refreshing in this age of manufactured or received emotions.

Hello You deals with a new beginning, a change in direction through taking a chance, while All The Love In The Land and Unspoken Words both exude optimism and espouse a simple, ageless philosophy; the title track deals in a sanguine, quite upbeat manner with the torment felt when one's love is unfaithful. The intense and very real power of love is key to songs such as I'll Be Back (an honest and loving tribute to her parents), Thinking Of You and Loving You (which concern connections between loved ones over space and feelings of unconditional love), while Wise Man deals with the relationship between mankind and nature); The Raft and A Little Note both take the theme of lovers forced to be apart (the latter drawing a loose parallel with the situation of a soldier fighting in Afghanistan). Jemima's chosen musical accompaniment is for the most part her own guitar, on a handful of songs with piano too; she also provides her own very capable (and sometimes, as on Saving Grace, quite daringly experimental) vocal harmonies on several songs. Her dad plays whistle on a couple of tracks, and adds a guitar part to I'll Be Back (on which track her mum also plays a whistle solo and sings harmonies).

I'm sure you will spend many Good Days listening to this fine debut, for it proclaims Jemima as an extraordinary new talent.

David Kidman