New Music Canada Track of the Day for March 9, 2009:
Jody Glenham "Coffee Soaked"
Posted by Tariq Hussain on Mar 09, 2009
On Fourth Street in Calgary, deep in the
Mission district is a coffee shop called
The Purple Perk. This shop sits in the same spot that once was home to the legendary
Planet Coffee which, sadly, went under a few years ago. The demise of The Planet truly marked the end of an era in Calgary. It was a bustling joint, a meeting place for the young and old, for painters, punkers, writers, dreamers, losers, winners - everyone stopped by.
I worked at The Planet for a lot of years. I saw a great many people pass through those doors and I made my fair share of cappuccinos and mochas. I had some good conversations there too, made countless friends, found band mates and even had a jam space in the basement for a while.
Those were good times, but eventually it was time to go and so I handed my seasoned apron off to a new generation of youthful baristas.
Years later, the coffee shop is still a great place for stealing a snapshot or two of humanity and doing some quick character studies. This gently building, piano based song by Vancouver's
Jody Glenham serves up a double shot of caffeine culture with lines like:
"Drowning all my self-esteem in cinnamon spiced whip cream." Amen to that - we've all been there.
By Eden Munro
Focus Pull (Independent)
From the melancholy piano chords and wistful vocal that open the album on “Coffee Soaked”—”Working in a coffee shop / Listening to strangers talk / How the world seems so trivial,” she sings—to the hopeful-yet-hushed tones of closing number “Lime”—”Let’s make the best of it ‘cause this mess could get sticky—Focus Pull is alive with emotion, Jody Glenham’s voice tender and nuanced as she deliver her words. Her piano—the instrument at the heart of the record—is inextricably linked to her voice, the two instruments so entwined as to act as one spine throughout the record. Not to be dismissed is the band that accompanies Glenham, though—on ”Buttons,” with its underlayer of acoustic guitar, some strings and a drum beat that oscillates between swinging and pounding, or the wah-wah guitar, soaring organ and rolling thunder of the drums on “Whisky (So Cold)”—not so much giving the record an added depth as much as shading in the holes and darkening the edges.
Winnipeg Free Press - Saturday, March 14thBy Jeff Monk
Focus Pull (Independent)
If you were to go strictly by the cover art on her latest album you might think that former Manitoban Jody Glenham had made a happy-go-lucky children's album. Thankfully for us adults, that is not the case. Glenham now calls Vancouver home and her sophomore album Focus Pull benefits from her skill at writing interesting songs without sounding like she's navel-gazing. She obviously has compositional skill and uses it without making pretentious, grandiose statements -- something that too many artists her age think they need to do to get over. The easy-going mixture of musical elements here -- strings, Weissenborn and the at times wonderfully gnarly guitar shadings of Jon Lovell make for a very attractive listen. Tracks like the country lilting Slip Away, the haunting Whisky (So Cold) and Buttons are near-perfect examples of thoughtful, natural music that will surely pull you in.