Wanda on Mike Ireland and Jesse Sykes!

By Wanda

Mike Ireland and Holler – Try Again (Ashmont Records)

Countrypolitan Mike Ireland’s latest release is chock full of songs about being sad, but the songs, layered with lush backing vocals and full strings, just never sound that sad, even when Ireland is telling us “Love’s the Hardest Thing You’ll Ever Do.”

Most of the world knows that Ireland’s first solo album, “Learning How to Live” (1998) – an album full of bitterness and anguish – chronicled the tortured end of his relationship with his wife (who left him for a Starkweathers bandmate), but this album marks Ireland’s return to hope and and a new love: “I found a sweet sweetheart to make a brand new start/ Just when I’d given up / On ever finding anyone to care for me.”

This record is a good one for fans of the countrypolitan sound (think Roger Miller), twangy ballads, and anyone who has ever had their heart broken and learned to love again.

Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter – Reckless Burning (Burn Burn Burn)

Jesse Sykes’ voice haunts you from the opening notes, distorted and fuzzy, on her debut release, “Reckless Burning.” “Reckless Burning” will probably draw comparison to the Cowboy Junkies, but the sound is not as spare – Sykes employs piano, organ, harmonium, mellotron, banjo, and lap steel to create careful layers, through it all, strumming her acoustic guitar and whispering sad, slow melodies about love, loss, and loneliness.

Sykes’ voice is softly tremendous, but the real strength here is the songwriting. Like fellow Pacific Northwest native Neko Case, Sykes uses drowning as a metaphor for the death of relationships and loss of self: “Doralee, there’s water in the basement/ Saturday, you’ll be sleeping in the trees” (Doralee), or “It’s not hard to forgive / When you’re holding back a river, of drowned men.” The pervasive images of flood and water evoke a sense of impending doom: “and if I sleep, beside the river, will it flood over me?” (Your Side Now).

Even though these are supposedly love songs, some composed while she and band mate Phil Wandscher were camping and their relationship was blossoming, the same dark, dank water images reoccur in every song like a leitmotif: “This is where my ship has run aground / Stuck in the mud of the Puget Sound.” Sykes says the water imagery simply comes from life outside Seattle, where rain is a way of life. But some of the songs seem downright sad: “I never thought heartbreak would follow me ‘round / Well I’m lonely / Well I’m lonely still” (Lonely Still). And yet the songs do affirm life and love: “Well I’m as far away from life as I can be / But I’m on your side now” (Your Side Now). They are sad, sweet, slow – truly a beautiful debut with the promise of great things to come. Drown yourself in Jesse Sykes.