Jennifer Kimball
| Jennifer Kimball | |
|---|---|
| Genres | Folk rock |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, songwriter |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar |
| Years active | 1980s–present |
| Labels | MCA, Elektra, Green Linnet, Epoisse, Philips, Imaginary Road |
| Associated acts | The Story |
| Website | www |
Jennifer Kimball is a singer and songwriter who formed the folk duo The Story with Jonatha Brooke.
Jennifer Kimball and Amherst College friend Jonatha Brooke began playing music together in the 1980s. They performed regularly during their college years. Their folk songs were marked by "witty wordplay and sumptuous pop harmonies," according to one music critic. Critics noted a resemblance between their music and earlier artists such as Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon in terms of excellent musicianship, singing, and writing. Kimball graduated from Amherst in 1986.
They called themselves The Story. One critic wrote "Jennifer Kimball played the Art Garfunkel role in The Story" who contributed "high ethereal harmonies." In 1989, the duo played the coffeehouse folk circuit and radio which exemplified the "folk-rock singer-songwriter aesthetic," according to one account. Kimball and Brooke "burst to fame" with this combination. They created a demo called Over Oceans and were promptly signed to the independent label Green Linnet which, in 1991, issued the duo's debut full-length album Grace in Gravity. Later Elektra Records signed The Story and re-issued their debut.
Their second album, The Angel in the House, was released in 1993. One critic raved about the "exquisite arrangements and tricky, pitch-perfect harmonies by Ms. Brooke and her vocal partner, Jennifer Kimball," and added they "are the last word in elegant folk-pop refinement." The album featured "moody jazz and Brazilian-flavored arrangements" and "the duo's harmonies, which usually begin in a comfortably folkish vein, frequently stray into precise chromatic dissonance" and had a "sophisticated international flavor." Their song Over Oceans was used as background for dance choreographer Kristen Caputo. The songs contemplate a woman's conflicting desires for love and achievement and the need to shake off the romantic myth of a male rescuer.
Another music critic noticed the contrast between the lighter patter between songs and the heavier songs themselves: there was "levity" between heavy songs about "God, church, death, female oppression, self-suppression, mothers and daughters." Their songs adroitly avoided "heavy-handedness" with a certain "winning buoyancy of tune and/or spirit" with "sophisticated harmonic changes whose intriguing hooks come at you cockeyed and sideways more often than they swoop down from the heavens." The duo were compared with artists such as Suzanne Vega and Indigo Girls. Another reviewer gave the duo mixed reviews: "intriguingly distorted harmonies and interesting turns of phrase" but some "attempts at cleverness overreached" and there was "a painfully obvious unrecorded song about dieting and a silly, albeit self-consciously so, stab at voguing a la Madonna." Another wrote their "music can alternate between heart-rending poetry and infectious flights of fancy."
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