Jessica Lea Mayfield sings with a drawl that goes slightly flat when she sustains notes and gives certain words the semblance of regional color. It could be a personal characteristic of her downcast voice, or perhaps a nod to her Rust Belt upbringing, but the 19-year-old singer/songwriter, who recorded her 2007 debut under the name Chittlin', sounds immediately distinctive and poised on "Kiss Me Again", the opening track on her second album, With Blasphemy So Heartfelt, calling to mind but ultimately surpassing comparisons to Hope Sandoval or Syd Straw. "You can kiss me again if you want, I don't mind," she sings, yet she sounds actively invested in her romantic passivity-- a fascinating and endlessly listenable contradiction.
Blasphemy was produced by fellow Ohioan Dan Auerbach, who corralled Mayfield into singing on the Black Keys' Attack & Release earlier this year. Here he swathes her vocals in dreamy country production, heavy on rumbling guitar and even heavier on atmospherics that give her songs a vinyl noir feel that's more Brick than Double Indemnity. His slurring riffs illuminate the inner turmoil of "I Can't Lie to You, Love", and a banjo adds spikes to "We've Never Lied" as Mayfield sings, "I'll talk to whoever I goddamn wanna." Her quavering vocals are textured in reverb, as if to suggest that her lyrics are inner monologues resounding in her love-fevered brain. Emphasizing the physical-- breath on neck, hand clasping hand, lips against lips-- her lyrics suggest a world where kisses can still pack contradictions and lying is an everyday occurrence, and her subtly dramatic vocals bring that world to life.
As jaded and adult as she comes across on "Call Me" and "Bible Days", Mayfield still sounds like she's describing the tribulations of young love, although that assertion may be due to her age prompting preconceptions in the listener. Still, concrete descriptions like "I was walking with your left hand in my back pocket" (from the lilting, resigned "For Today") sound like she's singing for all the Lindsay Weirs of the world. Noting Mayfield's age shouldn't suggest she has little authority beyond the late-teen set. Just the opposite: The relationships she describes on Blasphemy are supremely dark and compromised-- not sweet but scarred. On "The One That I Love Best", as Auerbach churns out a thundery riff, she yearns for the guy who's "my first thought in the morning," but then she mentions he's also "the reason that I cry myself to sleep." It's these complexities and contradictions that make Blasphemy more than just a collection of conflicted love songs, as in total they cohere into a strong statement of identity by a woman who is finding out that she might just be "happier when I'm alone."
