The Album Club: Jaymay - Autumn Fallin'

I joined Rough Trade's Album Club last month. The premise is simple, they select ten of the best releases each month and then send you one or all of them through the post. All for the princely sum of £12 per album. Admittedly, the price is a little over the odds for a CD, but you do get the benefit of Rough Trade's experience and taste, as well as the excitement and surprise of a mystery album each month.

My first experience of the Album Club was Jaymay's Autumn Fallin', arriving through the door ten days before Christmas. Jaymay is Jamie Seerman, of New York City. In her introduction, she paints a rather romantic picture of herself walking the streets of New York, writing songs of the things she sees. I'd imagine that she wasn't quite doing this with guitar strapped on and her support band behind her, but the thought is definitely pleasantly whimsical. She explains that most of the songs on the album were influenced by the seasons, a bitter winter in particular. The sense of that comes through very strongly. Jaymay's songs exude a cool, morose and even tragic exterior, but have a warm and engaging heart. These songs are of stories told to friends around a warm fire with the harsh winter firmly outside.

Further to this, the sense of Jaymay writing songs as the mood takes her really comes across well. Songs like Hard to Say are over before they've begun, a brief but productive burst of thought leading to a song being recorded. See Green, See Blue and the likes of You'd Rather Run in particular are much more expansive, perhaps hinting at long, evenings spent inside during the dark winter months. Either way, they all combine to create a soothing, but at times powerful album, the perfect accompaniment to an evening in the warm, with friends.