Jaime Wyatt’s much-buzzed-about debut, Felony Blues, focused on her battle with addiction and time in prison for drug-related crimes. Her remarkable follow-up, 2020’s Neon Cross, continued that same autobiographical narrative, finding her dealing with some of the associated trauma and finally coming out in a genre not exactly known for its open-mindedness. Her latest, Feel Good, sounds like a person putting down the heavy load they’ve been carrying around and moving into a much more optimistic mindset. There’s still grief being exorcised here, but the feeling is much more hopeful in the end.
“A lot of us grow up feeling like we have to hide who we are just to be accepted, but that comes from a place of fear and judgment,” Wyatt explains. “I wrote these songs as a way of letting go of all that, as permission to feel good.”
Wyatt still brings that perfect blend of Country, Americana, and Roots with flashes of Rock, but digs even deeper into the classic R&B and Southern Soul this time around, especially on tracks like the heartbreaking “Hold Me One Last Time,” blending church organ with a crunchy guitar solo; and on “Jukebox Holiday,” with its steady drumming and guitar in lockstep. Elsewhere, “Where The Damned Only Go,” sounds like a stark take on Harry Nilsson, and Wyatt puts her own mark on The Grateful Dead’s “Althea” (a tribute to her late father who took her to numerous Dead shows). But the best track here is a beautiful ode to queer love, on the impossibly catchy “Love is a Place.”
Having worked with Shooter Jennings on Neon Cross, Wyatt turned to Black Pumas’ Adrian Quesada to help produce Feel Good, a natural choice given the stronger pull to Soul influences on this one. The album is not as immediately accessible as Neon Cross, but with just a couple of repeated listens you start to pick up on more nuances to the songs and you find a little bit more to love each time.
