Some female singers are content to fade into the background, letting their vocals become one with the instrumentals to the point where you can’t even pick them out from the piano. New York’s own Jillette Johnson is not one of those ladies.
Johnson is on Wind-Up Records, a label with significant experience in the strong female vocals department (Evanescence and Megan McCauley are amongst the label’s former acts). Johnson has been writing music and taking lessons since she was only three years old, and she cites Joni Mitchell, Billie Holiday, and Prince among her many musical influences.
Johnson can be both tender (“Pauvre Coeur”) and passionate (“Torpedo”), so don’t figure her for a one-trick pony. She enjoys the music of artists like Fiona Apple and Regina Spektor, and it shows in her own. Not quite as gritty as Apple, and not nearly as quirky as Spektor, Johnson puts what could almost be considered a fierce but pretty spin on similar styles of music.
Johnson’s delicious-sounding EP (in both title and content), Whiskey and Frosting, is available for free download over at Noisetrade. You can also pick up a copy of her album Water in a Whale (to which Whiskey and Frosting was a prelude) on Amazon.com.
A Mooz Boosh 