Amy Jay: “Awake Sleeper” (2022) CD Review

Amy Jay is a singer and songwriter currently based in New York. She released a couple of EPs, in 2016 and 2018, and has now put out her first full-length album. Titled Awake Sleeper, it features all original material. The album is full of beautiful songs that listeners will connect to on different levels – the level of actual shared experience, perhaps, but also emotionally and maybe even spiritually. The music combines folk with electronic sounds, creating an interesting atmosphere that feels part ethereal, part worldly, fitting for songs which seem to take place both in our minds and in the actual world. Joining her on this album are Jordan Rose on drums, Mike Robinson on guitar and pedal steel, Chris Parker on guitar, Andrew Freedman on piano and synthesizers, Jeremy McDonald on bass, and Duncan Wickel on violin and cello.

The album opens with “Lucid Dreaming,” which features the sound of a train approaching, but here that sound has a dreamlike quality, a hypnotic quality, that seems to summon memories, or allow for them to rise to the surface. It is like watching shards of images passing from the subway car, letting them evoke whatever memories they will, as we might try to give them meaning. The music then grows quieter while she tells us, “Nothing’s making sense/Nothing’s making sense.” Ah, that is a line for our times, whether we are awake or not, remembering or projecting. The song kicks in again following that. Amy Jay’s vocals have a pretty, dreamy quality. “Lucid Dreaming” is followed by “Reliance,” in which she sings “I forgot to say I love you again/Careless like the sheets in the mess I left.” An electronic pulse runs through this song, which somehow works incredibly well with her beautiful vocal delivery, sounding angelic at times, even as she describes earthly scenes, common activities. I love the work on strings. Then “Commute” puts us back on the train, which can feel the loneliest of places even when fairly crowded, when we are disconnected from those around us. This is a gorgeous sort of pop music. “Does anyone else feel like me?” she asks here, sounding both vulnerable and strong.

As “Call My Name” begins, it sounds like a folk song. Then approximately halfway through it is like a flower suddenly bursting into bloom, opening up to reveal what was dwelling inside, what maybe was eager to escape, or at least eager to be seen, to be acknowledged. It is a song of a long-term relationship, one perhaps both parties are still not completely certain of. “I swore I’d run away/Why do you call my name?/Why do you call my name?/Are you satisfied with the choice that you have made?” That’s followed by “Inner Critic,” also exploring an aspect of a relationship, the way we may look critically at our significant other in the way that we do at ourselves. There is a beautiful instrumental section in the second half which features cello. “Monster” contains an intriguing instrumental section as well, and it is during it that the song takes a turn. “She feeds well on anxiety/A balanced diet of fear and control/I’ve asked her to go away/She respectfully declines/It is somehow comforting.”

“Bide My Time” quietly grabs you right as it starts, its opening line being one most of us can appreciate: “I wish I could thrive on disappointment.” What I also like about it is there is a pause after the word “thrive,” so at first we think that word completes the thought. And check out these lines: “I’d be so productive/If I were powered by letdowns/Maybe it’s time to rest/Bite my tongue/Say nothing so I don’t sound so desperate.” This is one of my personal favorites, and it is a song that I’m guessing will speak strongly to a lot of people, particularly in these exhausting and trying times, when we feel regularly disappointed by humanity. “At least I could say I guess I tried.” This song becomes undeniably beautiful toward the end. That’s followed by “Sorrow,” which begins with a question: “Why be so mysterious?” It is a question aimed at the heavens. Then “Remember” addresses the changes people go through in a relationship. “Remember, remember/No one told us it was easy.” The album concludes with “Self-Deprecation,” another compelling song. There is something delicate, something vulnerable in its sound, in her delivery. There is also a strong sense of atmosphere, of the song taking place in a reality, for there is a background and there are imperfections. “But I’ll still take my chances.”

CD Track List

1. Lucid Dreaming
2. Reliance
3. Commute
4. Call My Name
5. Inner Critic
6. Monster
7. Bide My Time
8. Sorrow
9. Remember
10. Self-Deprecation

Awake Sleeper was released on February 11, 2022.