Ohio neo-country singer Jessica Lea Mayfield writes eloquently analytical love songs. With her languid drawl suggesting an interior monologue rather than an actual conversation-- as if she's thinking things out in her head-- she comes across as a woman torn between her heart and her brain. On her 2008 debut, With Blasphemy So Heartfelt, she picked apart her relationships like a scholar deconstructs a text, parsing out the finer regrets and conflicts right up to the point of severing the emotional connection between herself and the "you" she's addressing. Mayfield sets her songs at that precipice of a break-up-- a tactic that lends her music the emotional force of the best country music and distinguishes her from other songwriters.
Tell Me, her second album, matches and at times even surpasses her debut in terms of rueful atmosphere and unflinching songwriting, and Mayfield works to break free of her country confines and showcase her vocals in new, unexpected settings. Blasphemy set a mood and sustained it; by comparison, the follow-up is positively kaleidoscopic, both musically and emotionally. She writes pop hooks, mingles pedal steel with ramshackle studio beats, and incorporates new styles and influences, such that each song has its own unique identity. If Tell Me lacks the rawness of her youthful debut (she wasn't even old enough to vote when she recorded Blasphemy), it sounds more adventurous and more playful, taking greater risks that almost always pay off. The beat on "Grown Man", which sounds like a factory pre-set on an old Casio re-appropriated as some sort of analog electronica, should sound flippant and gimmicky, yet it lends a wryness to her lyrics about a May-December romance: "I'd give most anything to know, as you're sitting there with your legs crossed and no clothes on, what you are thinking of." She is, the song makes clear, the more mature one.
Sex remains a constant throughout these songs, yet because it offers a respite from romantic bewilderment, Mayfield's songwriting never becomes tawdry. "Hate has brought me up the stairs into your house," she sings on "Our Hearts Are Wrong". "I'll not let hate be the one to make me naked for you." There's a lot going on in these tough-minded tracks, and the music is calibrated to reinforce her heady sentiments. Forgoing the cavernous sound of Blasphemy, producer Dan Auerbach gives Tell Me a snappy immediacy that unites these disparate styles and musical experiments into a cohesive whole. His and Richie Kirkpatrick's guitars crash almost brutally against her delicate vocals on "I'll Be the One You Want Someday" and "Somewhere in Your Heart", but in a way that enacts her emotional turmoil.
The album peaks early with "Blue Skies Again", whose ooh-sha-la-la's (sung by Auerbach) and simple, infectious chorus make it a standout. It's Mayfield's most pop-oriented moment, mixing country, girl group, shoegazer, and indie pop into a breezy sound, but it's also a sunny, reassuring song that draws even more power from being the bright spot among so many dire situations. And that reveals the central and enthralling contradiction on Tell Me: Mayfield's uncertainties have inspired a proportionately confident album, as musically assured as it is romantically conflicted.
