JUKES' mainstay Tammy Payne has clearly lived a fair bit. Let's face it, even the most adventurous of us would struggle to better a CV featuring Jack Kerouac-style road trips, travelling to Brazil and Amsterdam to learn about all things percussive, writing songs for Smith & Mighty and collaborating with the likes of Portishead's Geoff Barrow and PJ Harvey colleague John Parish. Not to mention a stint aboard a cruise liner while still at the impressionable age of 17.
However, if this last CV entry brings to mind scary images of Payne as some kind of cut price Jayne MacDonald (shudder), then fear not, for the rather excellent, low-key delights of her second album 'We Might Disappear' soon banish them once again. Because, put simply, it's one of those gentle, unassuming wonders that you may well find yourself returning to again and again in the years to come.
Although your reviewer must confess total ignorance of it, Jukes' eponymous debut was released by the celebrated Twisted Nerve label and on the basis of 'We Might Disappear', it's not hard to understand why TN boss Andy Votel and his famous chum Badly Drawn Boy were seduced by Tammy's off-kilter charms. After all, her music here draws on acousticism, beats, gleeful genre-hopping and the sort of downbeat, dark horse pop that Twisted Nerve have put money on so successfully in the past.
And, when lobbed fervently into Payne's exotic melting pot, the sweetmeats are never less than tasty when they emerge cooked through and exuding strange, but alluring flavours. Although not exactly representative, the opening 'Pears & Milk' is as good an introduction to Payne's skewhiff world as any with its' vulnerable, folksy lilt and backing vocals best described as 'soulfully Gregorian'. It's not the only time she imprints her own image on curiously gorgeous, Velvets-style melancholy either: witness tunes like the kooked and dreamy 'Trust Your Feelings', where the guitars furtively seep out through your headspace, or the opiated somnolence of 'From Over There' with its' staggered, Chan Marshall-style vocal harmonies.
Elsewhere, Payne embarks upon equally intriguing forays into poppier territories and brings back a fine yield. New single 'Something Important' features a patiently sturdy groove, vibrato wah-wah guitars and a quizzical lyrical bent ("maybe I'm just doing nothing, just running through a film in my head") and a close-miked, childlike vocal that finds Payne coming on like a female Jonathan Richman, while 'Mothersister' pits stinging guitar dissonance from John Parish against buzzy, '70s synth sounds and mixes honey sweet with tangy sour to great effect. Perhaps superior again is the edgy 'The Stupidest Things' - arguably the album's most aggressive track - where snaggly guitars, Moon-esque drum clatter and Payne's obsessive, mutter-y vocal ("the stupidest things have the power to hypnotise/ I mustn't confuse you with fire") all meld together and set sparks flying in fine style.
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In fact, one of this album's most attractive features is its' lack of glaring weak points, but Payne also sensibly retains some of her strongest work for the home strait to ensure we remain headily fortified. The vivid 'Born In The Sea' - replete with seductive, siren song vocals from Payne, guitars somewhere 'tween vibrato Costello and surf-y Dick Dale and Morricone-esque spaghetti western atmosphere - is just possibly the record's finest achievement of all. Well, I say that, but it's given a real run for its' money by the closing 'I Love The Snow', where Jukes go out strolling in a wintry wonderland laced with Mazzy Star-style beauty and Tammy weighs in with the album's very best lyric courtesy of "I love the snow, it covers the ground where the shit has been/ it makes me believe in everything." Which, as potted wisdom goes, takes some beating.
So, while the title 'We Might Disappear' conjures images of reducing and fading away, its' enigmatic contents suggest Tammy Payne and her talented cohorts can only sketch a far more visible profile for themselves in the near future. On the basis of this, you wouldn't bet against them working up a full blown masterpiece a little further down the line.
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