Simply the title of this album feels ambitious. But not even this prepares you for what you’ll experience if you approach this album with an open mind, and as a linear work. Karen Jonas has released an exemplar take on the American concept record.
Her latest album The Southwest Sky and Other Dreams is an imaginative and inspired work of involved stories and finely-woven songwriting, with intermissions of enjoyable romps through country and roots escapism, influenced from treks through desert California and West Texas.
Fredericksburg, Virginia’s Karen Jonas surprised everyone in March when she released one of the year’s most unexpected, yet critically-acclaimed albums called Oklahoma Lottery. The album showed tremendous musical wisdom for a freshman effort, and scored high marks for songwriting, musicianship, arrangement, singing and guitar playing by Jonas.