Jennifer O'Connor

The Color and the Light (Red Panda)

By Cole Haddon
Published: July 11th, 2005 | 11:28am

Jennifer O’Connor’s new album, The Color and the Light, is a mélange of country and pop, the tracks blurring the demarcation line between the two genres to become what is now called alt-country. Then there comes the pop-goth ditty “Million Dollar Smile,” which would be a perfect fit on the next vampire flick’s soundtrack, but is curiously out of place here.

While this eclecticism works for roughly the first half of the album, the illusion that there’s a greater orchestration of sounds quickly evaporates and you find yourself with nothing to cling to but three-or-so solid songs. The rest, while promising and often evocative of early Liz Phair, is a muddled mess with no cohesive vision. But even in that mess, all is not lost.

“Beg or Borrow Days” is an infectious country tune about a woman too stubborn to regret her own mistakes. “The Color and the Light” is a slow, plodding narrative where every piano key strike is like a nail being hammered into your heart. And it’s on tracks like this that O’Connor’s propensity to wander Elliot Smith’s emotional landscape comes to the forefront. Beautiful strings of words like “I told you I wanted to be like the color and the light / Filling up everything with the brightest kind of bright” make your soul inhale sharply. But then she follows that up with “Hole in the Road,” this time channeling Aimee Mann. The track after that sounds like someone too, as does the next, and the next. I was left with this question only: What does Jennifer O’Connor sound like?