Jillette Johnson is an artist who started writing music at age eight. By the time she was a teenager, she played three-hour sets of original music at a restaurant near her home in New York. To say that music has been a labor of love for her is an understatement.
Like all of us, Johnson has had to deal with COVID-19 and the effect it has had on our livelihoods. Of the new album It’s a Beautiful Day and I Love You, she said, “It would have been easy to lean into the melancholy. It was an act of rebellion to not indulge the pain, to look beyond it and not wallow.”
She shows pretty early on that she doesn’t want to be bound by any particular genre. Between her vocals and the swirling psychedelic melody, the opening track “Many Moons” has something of a dreamy feel. The psychedelic sound can also be heard in the guitar of “Angelo”, but this one feels something like a song by The Sundays.
As the album continues, she shows that she can move pretty easily between sounds from one song to the next. For example, “Annie” isn’t a country song, but there is some country twang running through the melody – especially in the guitar. The title track is another interesting blend of sounds. Overall it feels like a 90s power-pop song, but the guitar sound has some similarity to Brian May. Another thing you can say about the title track is that it is perfect for the middle of a set when the band wants to get a little breather and get the entire crowd singing along. Johnson even taps into a soul sound in “Graveyard Boyfriend”. It is particularly apparent in the upbeat piano part.
Johnson is strong on her own, but it would be interesting to hear Johnson as the vocalist for a power-pop band. She can easily belt out the hooks that get people singing along, but she is also pretty strong at making the listener feel something in the lyrics of the ballads. On top of all that, she has the ability to change her vocal tone in a way that brings Natalie Imbruglia to mind.
The charm of this album is the fact that you can’t predict what’s next. Johnson bounces easily from one style to another, but no matter the sound of any given song, her vocals are always spot-on. That being said, it seems fair to say that she was born to be a singer. With her voice, it’s hard to imagine her as software engineer or something like that.
Photo credit: Betsy Phillips
