Jessica Lea Mayfield has kicked off a headlining tour US tour featuring music from her new album, Tell Me. The tour makes its way up the East Coast this week. Time Out, in recommending Friday's show in New York, describes Tell Me as "a fab showcase for her voice, which somehow seems both lived-in and fresh, youthful and cynical." Mayfield has been named Vogue's Artist of the Week. While Tell Me "is loaded with perfectly forlorn country melodies and melancholy lines," says Vogue, "there is also a hint of mid-nineties alt-rock underpinning all the wistful contemplation, as well as the influence of more modern singer-songwriters, like the late Elliott Smith."
Jessica Lea Mayfield recently kicked off a headlining tour across the United States featuring music from her Nonesuch debut album, Tell Me, produced by The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach. Singer-songwriter Daniel Martin Moore is supporting along the way. The tour makes its way up the East Coast this week, following last night's performance at the Black Cat in Washington, DC, with performances at Glasslands Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, tonight, World Café Life in Philadelphia tomorrow, Bowery Ballroom in New York on Friday, and Brighton Music Hall in Boston on Saturday, before heading up to Toronto. Time Out, in recommending Friday's show, describes Tell Me as "a fab showcase for her voice, which somehow seems both lived-in and fresh, youthful and cynical."
To cap off the week, Mayfield has been named Artist of the Week by Vogue magazine. Mayfield's "music has the same ramblin’ quality usually associated with old school, pre–CMA Awards country music," writes Vogue's Freddie Campion, "in the tradition of wandering troubadours like Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, and Depression-era bluegrass gospel quartets, which Mayfield credits as one of her main influences."
While the new album "is loaded with perfectly forlorn country melodies and melancholy lines," says Campion, "there is also a hint of mid-nineties alt-rock underpinning all the wistful contemplation, as well as the influence of more modern singer-songwriters, like the late Elliott Smith."
Read more and listen to the album track "Our Hearts Are Wrong" at vogue.com.
The Washington Post's Express Night Out, previewing last night's show at the Black Cat, says that, like Mayfield's "dark and beautiful" debut album, 2008's With Blasphemy So Heartfelt, "Tell Me has plenty of stark, lonely moments, driven by Mayfield's sultry, twangy vocals and Auerbach's bluesy guitar playing. But it's the songs farthest from her debut—the drum-machine-led 'Our Hearts Are Wrong,' the downright electronic title track and the poppy 'Blue Skies Again' that prove most interesting." Read more at expressnightout.com.
For more on Mayfield's upcoming performances, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.
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