Jade Jackson reveals her relative inexperience in songwriting when she opens her debut album, Gilded (Anti), with the couplet, “I grew up my father’s daughter / He said, ‘Don’t take no shit from no one.” The 25-year-old artist may well be relaying a genuine experience for all I know, but those banal lines set the tone for an album by someone who admires country music but isn’t yet able to add anything to the tradition. Though she has a powerful voice, she too often overuses mannerisms such as a catch in her throat or a melodramatic swoop into her upper register, and on tunes such as “Salt to Sugar” her admiration for Lucinda Williams becomes a straitjacket.…
Jade Jackson reveals her relative inexperience in songwriting when she opens her debut album, Gilded (Anti), with the couplet, “I grew up my father’s daughter / He said, ‘Don’t take no shit from no one.” The 25-year-old artist may well be relaying a genuine experience for all I know, but those banal lines set the tone for an album by someone who admires country music but isn’t yet able to add anything to the tradition. Though she has a powerful voice, she too often overuses mannerisms such as a catch in her throat or a melodramatic swoop into her upper register, and on tunes such as “Salt to Sugar” her admiration for Lucinda Williams becomes a straitjacket.…