Jewell is a Gem

Eilen is awesome. Definitely worth a full download but if you are going to just download one to three songs you must download Bang Bang Bang, Queen of the Minor Key and Warning Signs. Can't say enough about the quality of her band who are masters of their instruments. Everyone I have played her music for has downloaded her music. Eilen please put NYC on your tour.

Another great set from Miss Eilen

I always look forward to new releases from Eilen Jewell, for a couple of reasons. I enjoy her voice, her energy, her choice of tunes, and the genuine feel of people making real music. But also because I'm never quite sure of what I'm gonna get (but I know it will be good). If you go back and listen to her earlier releases (which used to be on EMUSIC, but seem to not be now) you'll notice that the style changes with each recording, just enough to make it new, but still familiar. This keeps me coming back, to see what I'm gonna get. So, what's here? This CD has more of a retro groovy feel to it than some of her other releases (though that has always been present). the sound is leaner than "Sea of Tears", and more complex than "Letters from Sinners", but you can hear parts of her past in this latest CD. One on line review said "no throw away tracks here" - and that is the truth. Some of this rocks, some of it weeps, all of it works.

Eilen Jewell’s music lives in a middle ground between vintage country and the blues, and her plain-spoken but artful songs serve as an apt reminder that there’s more the two styles share than there is that keeps them apart. Jewell’s sixth album, 2011′s Queen of the Minor Key, is her first release since her tribute to the songs of Loretta Lynn, Butcher Holler, and while Jewell wrote all 14 songs on this set, one might guess she was thinking Patsy Cline during these sessions after previously contemplating Cline’s friend Loretta. There’s a darker, late-night feel to this music than on most of Jewell’s previous material, and though there are also a handful of uptempo numbers on board, the songs on Queen of the Minor Key are more than suitable accompaniment for late-night cocktails, a cigarette with a clandestine lover, or other walks after midnight. Jewell clearly knows her way around a torch song (“Only One”), she’s picked up a few lessons about love (“Bang Bang Bang”) and she can say farewell to a lover as she answers the call of the highway as well as anyone (“Long Road”).Her vocal style is carefully nuanced and all the more effective for her subtle approach, while her band — Jerry Miller on guitars, Johnny Sciascia on upright bass, and Jason Beek on drums — is marvelous, calling up variations on the honky tonk sound as each number requires and sounding masterful on them all. In an era when bluster and overkill are the order of the day in both country and blues, Queen of the Minor Key is a reminder that this music at its best speaks to the wayward impulses of the human heart, and Eilen Jewell embodies that quiet, insistent voice as well as anyone making music in the 21st century. – Mark Deming