Jane Fallon’s latest release Gemini Rising In A Patchwork Sky, her third solo CD, confronts the emotions that burst onto the scene of several kinds of unfolding dramas. This singer-songwriter is also on a quest for salvation, for the things that nag at the human soul until redemption is found.
Opening track “Give Me Grace” finds Fallon singing in a straight forward manner about a journey through the Great Depression and asking for a little bit of salvation. With only her even tempered vocal and an assertive interval of acoustic guitar notes, Fallon creates a driven sound that looks right into the soul of a wearied traveler. When she steps it up a bit in intensity, Fallon creates a beautiful arc in her song, and it remains suspended, like a rainbow, something beautiful that holds up on its own inexplicable grace.
“It’s How Deep” puts Fallon’s fulsome sound to good use. There is ripe deliciousness in every picked note. The guitar is like a handful of juicy grape, each offering something sweet. A personable singer, Fallon makes you feel almost as if she is whispering the story in your ear when you’re in a roomful of people. She sustains some vocal notes with a smooth, slightly breathy timbre that is filled with a quiet beauty and strength.
The harmonica on “Money’s Almost Gone” glides in like a warm summer breeze and underscores the sad reality of personal economics. Fallon’s soulful drawl finds it way to the listener’s heart when she suddenly emphasizes a forlorn hope that things will turn out all right. She doesn’t sing directly of hope, but that she keeps going on despite her struggles says a lot.
Fallon covers “One Horse Town” by singer-songwriter Jim Henry and she makes it her own with that way she makes her voice at once assertive and smooth. Images of life within the county line come to striking life in her understated delivery. She sings beautifully but at the same time, let’s the pictures speak for themselves with out hitting the listener over the head with shifting dynamics.
The reflective and melancholy piano ballad “Don’t Forget To Forgive Me” gives Fallon a chance to emote from a deep place. And she does it with such artistry. Piano(Lori Diamond), cello( Mary Carfagna), violin(Phil Bloch), and bass(Fred Abatelli) encase this song with a bouquet of notes that make the situation feel even more forlorn and mournful. The situation is also mournfully beautiful in the pantheon of human experience, things that can happen to us in life, failures and mistakes that, while painful and regretful, make us who we are.
“Battles” uses adept instrumentation to conjure images of tension between human creatures. The guitar makes quick, choppy chords to represent sparring, and the mandolin infuses the music with a quirky energy to represent the fighting spirit. The hodgepodge of sound infuses Fallon’s song with greater depth and energy. You can appreciate Fallon’s wisdom while enjoying her soothing musical approach to one of life’s most challenging realities: interpersonal conflict resolution.
Fallon presents “Blue Dress” as a slow, country ballad, and the format works. Jaunty fiddle and bass underpinnings give the tune a flirty bounce that speaks well for Fallon’s songwriter skills. Over the country styling, the singer infuses the song with her fulsome vocal, once again, putting across deep feeling without affectation. It takes a true gift to reach a listener’s heart without relying on vocal gymnastics and without a lot of notes and chords flying around.
One of Fallon’s sadder songs, “The Boy He Used To Be,” relies on vocal sustains, milking significant words, to pull the emotional content to the forefront. The singer-songwriter looks at a young man in the military from the point of view of someone who knew him as an innocent child and now has to look upon him as someone who has lived through the horrors of war.
The African rhythms of “Run,” adeptly played by Oen Kennedy on a djembe, forge a bond between the listener and the women in this faraway land. Fallon puts the listener in a land where the norms are quite different, and she cheers on the female population who have to face trials and tribulations unlike her own. The song succeeds on so many levels, musically, vocally, when the chorus builds up and compels one to sing along. Lyrically, Fallon links to the women in this other culture, mothers, daughter working to keep their families whole.
“Country’s Winter Night” is Fallon’s strongest vocal performance on Gemini Rising. Her voice is filled with breathy enthusiasm and musical precision as she hits all the right spots, giving just enough oomph to keep the song rolling along with zest. It is as much fun as “Run” in that you want to sing along to the playful twists and turns in her verses.
Her title track uses her horoscope sign to build a serious metaphor between her life and the position of the stars. She doesn’t take astrology serious. She just uses the constellations to illustrate the story of her own life and she does so with unflinching honesty.
“Heaven Can’t Help You” closes out the CD with a dire warning theme. Rob Carlson’s Lap Steel provides an eerie backdrop to complete Fallon’s vision of scary, dark consequences that have been set in motion. Jeff Root’s edgy electric guitar is a honky tonk tone stretched out and echoed back to create an artfully frightening dreamscape. Fallon’s steady, even, straightforward vocal approach over the haunting music gives an extra, final layering of doom. Placing this number at the end of these chronicles of human experience hint at religious overtones and hearken back to mentions of the bible, grace, and retribution in previous songs.
Fallon is a singer-songwriter who faces life with unflinching honest and who infuses her songs with a flinty narration. The power of her songs cannot be denied.
An apt and thoughtful review of an excellent CD.