There’s a song in my heart and it was written by a girl with a guitar. That’s what we say in reviewer land when we can’t really work out the logic behind why we actually end up liking an album such as “The Seed” by Brighton’s favourite Australian ex-pat Eliza Jaye.
I suppose that I had better take a stab – now there’s a Glasgow thing for you - at the whys and wherefores behind this irrational line of reasoning. The first point in my deliberations is that Eliza Jaye does not sound like Kate Nash or indeed any other insipid poster. Neither is she a rock chick on the loose. She’s way too acerbic for that and she has puts a handbag full of post punk anger into her words with both “Love Potion” and “Fire” going large on the emotional battery acid.
It sometimes seems, however, that Eliza Jaye is at odds with herself with the near gothic obsession of “Marmalade” sounding isolated in the context of the whole album. The song is a stylistic, and reverb laden, inconsistency perhaps but curiously compelling nonetheless. “Crimson Lipstick”, on the other hand, seems so conventional that you could imagine it taking up residence on a movie soundtrack let alone camouflaging itself successfully amongst the other songs here.
Eliza Jaye continues to deliver on the promise shown in her earlier releases and I am equally glad to note that my obsession with girls and guitars still has some musical validity. So remember her name - Eliza Jaye. That’s Eliza Jaye. She’s got spirit and I like spirit. Hey, I do actually know why I like “The Seed” after all.