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After a seven year sabbatical taken to concentrate on family, New Jersey singer/songwriter Kate Jacobs returns with her fifth album. Recorded with her long-time band, Paul Moschella, James MacMillan, and Dave Schramm, who also produced the album, Home Game is a delightful collection devoted to the art of the three minute acoustic pop song, though two of them do clock in at a comparatively long four minutes.
As you might hope from an artist returning from domestic sabbatical, these are smartly written, wry observations of life from the perspective of one who, as Lennon said, was “sitting watching the wheels spin round”, for a few years.
Who wouldn’t love lyrics that can so playfully rhyme “Gwyneth Paltrow” with “pants too low”, as she does in “On My Monitor”, or when in “Sligo Lad” she uses the Irish setting to allude to local writers, rhyming “William Butler Yeats” with “He’s so great”, and later, “It’s not that he’s James Joyce, But there’s something in his voice”. If that wasn’t enough for the inner English major, she name drops Dorian Gray in a later song.
Home Game is an album reflecting maturity. There is an acceptance of life, of love, of problems, which runs through the songs (“Good Enough”,”It’s Time For Bed”). There are also the usually expected but obligatory new parent songs (“Home Game”, “All The Time”).The best of her tales are from the frontlines of finding maturity. A few recall those of fellow artist Amy Rigby, a bit sardonic, tongue in cheek, but accepting. Compare Rigby’s tune “As Is” or “Cynically Yours” with Jacob’s gentler “Good Enough” or “Love Comes and Goes”.
“Make Him Smile” pays tribute to Dusty Springfield’s “I Only Want To Be With You”, incorporating the familiar opening chords from the original. Perhaps she meant it as a sequel, singing years later of the difficulty of keeping that initial attraction alive as time passes.
The “$55 Motel” is a deliciously catchy lover’s revenge song, there’s something unnerving about the glee with which she contemplates her revenge in the sing a long chorus. “Good Enough”, features a duet with Gene Turonois with his best John Prine voice recalling Prine’s similarly themed duet with Iris Dement “In Spite Of Ourselves”.
