Sarah Jaffe
Don’t Disconnect (Kirtland)Deep inside the whirling dervish of Sarah Jaffe’s third full-length Don’t Disconnect lies traces of her folk balladry. Those roots date back to 2010 when she was armed with only an acoustic guitar and a Suburban Nature born from her Denton home base. Now, Jaffe’s working with a whole new electro-pop toolbox, one she tinkered with on 2012’s The Body Wins, only here she commands it in lush, lofty pop. “Fatalist” most closely approximates her to the simple songstress of yore, but its guitar swirl opens up a fresh soundscape. “Lover Girl” nods to Eighties synth-noir, punctuating a slow, sexy, electronic thrust with six-string whines, which melt easily into Sixties-leaning radio ballad “Slow Pour.” The cut-and-dry lyricism of “Some People Will Tell You” (“Most people try to stay positive/ I do what most people do”) could have been part of her early bedroom-folk dabbling. That kind of simple honesty roots both Sarah Jaffe’s music and Don’t Disconnect.
This article appears in August 29 • 2014.