Jenifer Jackson: So High

Joining the growing ranks of Burt Bacharach disciples takes skill, but not vision, and if giddy young orchestrators aren't careful, their heaping of strings, bells, and reeds can become a thick syrup with no pancake to coat. New York "pretty pop" purveyor Jenifer Jackson avoids this trap. Like similarly inclined players Swan Dive, The Pernice Brothers, and Josh Rouse, Jackson is a songwriter first, a sweetener second. On her second album So High, Jackson lays down 11 sketches of urban romance that alternate joyous delirium with desperate loneliness, all laced with persistent feelings of need. Structurally, the songs hew to a kind of coffeehouse folk-pop, with delicate melodies, fussed-over bridges, and choruses that would sound pleasant if played solely on acoustic guitar. But they sound better with the sophisticated instrumentation provided by Jackson and producer Pat Sansone (a Rouse sideman who's also worked with Swan Dive and Andrew Bird's Bowl Of Fire). The songs on So High are roomy, pieced together by Jackson's idle strumming, jots of jazz piano and Brasilia-influenced percussion, and a warming blanket of accordion hum and string-mimicking electric keyboards. Over all this, the singer-songwriter tries on different personae, acting tough and earthy one minute (as on the punchy title track, where Jackson comes on like Chrissie Hynde circa Learning To Crawl) and fragile and ethereal the next (as on the shimmering closer, "Blue Forever Mine"). The centerpiece of So High is the seven-and-a-half-minute "Got To Have You," which coils like a Joni Mitchell confessional while sporting a smooth jazz coating that would suit Anita Baker. Behind the musicianship's mature poses, Jackson reveals a strong personality, full of emphatic comments on how a person can be so crazy in love that it's almost terrifying, due to the fear of inevitable loss.