For those not in the know, throughout her new album Mnemonics, Amy Jay explores what makes the vulnerable acceptable, as well as the Joycean concept of what makes the universal specific: How do you love yourself when you don’t feel likable? How do you face pieces of your hidden self courageously? How do you hold space for negative thought patterns or feelings of embarrassment, insecurity, loneliness, or anxiety?

While such themes are often still stigmatized, through song, they become softer and more palatable. Jay assembled a crew of stellar local musicians with national track records to help take her sketches of folk songs into fully formed indie rock panoramas.

With long-time producer/engineer Jon Seale (Mason Jar Music) at the helm and guitarist Sam Skinner (Pinegrove, Fenne Lily), keyboardist Andrew Freedman (Michael Mayo, Ryan Beatty), Jay also enlisted bassists Jeremy McDonald and Margaux (Katy Kirby) and drummers Jason Burger (Big Thief) and Jordan Rose (Maggie Rogers) to round out her sound.

Mnemonics takes such hefty internal work and translates everything into ear-pricking songs that alternatingly float, stun, and comfort. And with Jay’s sly observations and embrace of nervous laughter in awkward situations, she infuses a sense of levity in the album.

The architecture of her songwriting, varied in length, tone, and dynamic, stands out, but it’s Jay’s voice that’s the connecting tissue. In songs like Margins and Excuse Me, her vibrato carries emotional insecurity and staunch vocal control simultaneously.

1. How the Mind Can Be a Trap
2. Margins
3. The Critic 4. Back to What’s Natural
5. Can’t Go Back
6. Excuse Me
7. The Little Things
8. Floral Comfort
9. Move on
10. Compassion

On an album where working on it was both the most empowering and most vulnerable recording experience to date for Amy, her new collection opens on the delightfully melodic How the Mind Can Be a Trap and then brings us the ariose Margins and then we get the sweetly tinged, yet gripping The Critic and the emboldened Back to What’s Natural.

Along next is a languishing yearn that ebbs through Can’t Go Back which is in turn backed seamlessly by the jangly early 90’s indie guitar feel to Excuse Me, the organically-hued and all-embracing yearn of The Little Things and the veritably translucent hum of Floral Comfort, the set rounding out on the stoically-charged duo of Move On and the passively cultured Compassion.

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