"‘Girls Who Cry Need Cake’ sounds like a Lucinda Williams mix tape...incredible songs relayed with staggering subtlety."

Track Listing

1. Drowning Slowly
2. Due South
3. 66 Days
4. Lullabye for a Ghost
5. Porcelain
6. Kentucky Turn
7. Between the Riverbank and the Highway
8. End of the Line
9. Maybe the Moon
10. Ten Feet Tall

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127197 in Music
• Released on: 2004-04-19
• Number of discs: 1

Logo, April 2004
"‘Girls Who Cry Need Cake’ sounds like a Lucinda Williams mix tape...incredible songs relayed with staggering subtlety."

The Daily Telegraph (Australia)
"...a beautiful album ... which melts the heart and soothes the soul".

The Age (Melbourne)
"...full of heartbreak, melody and finesse that takes the listener back in time... (a)vintage country rock meets alt-country masterpiece."

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Customer Reviews

An enigmatic pice of more than one country
From Ohio, via Kentucky, now apparently settled in Sydney, Jenny Queen creates an enigmatic identity. Her songs and voice are influenced by the South and its country tradition, but she doesn't fit neatly into a classification - not pure 'country', not 'alt.country', nor 'folk'. Commercially, you suspect she won't market well, and this may have consequences for her follow-up album. Will she have to pigeonhole herself and pick a brand label? Or has she the strength and determination to continue to go her own way?

The enigma deepens. No offence to a string of female singer-songwriters, but there is a tradition that they grew up in a trailer or shack, waited table from age 13, and, in general cleaned up and tidied up after men until they were mature enough to grasp that they had talent, an identity of their own, and a right to independence. Or so the marketing hype goes. Except Jenny Queen has a Masters degree in International Relations and worked with disadvantaged kids as an aid worker! That's got to alienate her from half the country-lovin' world to start with.

Jenny Queen's songs provide another layer to the enigma. There's a naivety to some - she's 26, so she's maybe young enough to still hurt and not old enough to have become cynical. Yet, given her academic background and obvious intellectual advantages, you have to ask, is she really that naive? She says she likes to tell stories, and clearly she does just that in her songs.

The problem she faces - and it a marketing problem - is how to get across the fact that she is bright enough to have serious insights into the human condition without being able to produce the credible, anti-hero hype of a "my life's been pure hell" biography that seems to dominate the sleeve notes of most country singers? Maybe that's really why she moved to Australia - there, she'll be accepted for her talent, not her roots. She admits that being away from home has stimulated her writing - accepts that maybe it gives her space and distance to romanticise things.

Her writing has an autobiographical feel. Given her experiences travelling, she's picked up influences from many sources. You sense she has used her writing as a form of therapy - exorcising the pain ... not so much of failed relationships, but the pain of feeling out of place, of being rootless, a peripatetic soul carrying a bag full of emotions, looking for somewhere to unpack, spread out and feel at home.

She has a good voice, if a bit understated and little-girlish in places, and the confidence to sing naturally and not resort to melodramatics. There's a hint of melancholy which sounds natural, not created for effect. But she's competing in a tough market with singer-songwriters like Gillian Welch or Lucinda Williams.

She opens with "Drowning Slowly", a get-over-the-relationship song, sung with dramatic quality; she sounds hurt, she feels pain. The arrangement and backing is clean and uncluttered; nothing gets in the way of the song. "Due South" follows the theme of the road-movie, the let's get out of this small town and find something meaningful ... until the relationship implodes and you find yourself homeless: "I'll bring the pills if you bring the wine/ we'll run her until we cross the state line". "66 Days" returns to the theme of fragmented romance, "So this is how it feels to know it's really over". "Lullabye For A Ghost" is a slower track, evoking loneliness. She covers Moby's "Porcelain" - the only song she didn't write herself. "Between The Riverbank And The Highway" is a tale of the homesick. You get the picture?

This is an album for introspective moments, for times when you need to nibble chocolate or cake rather than guzzle alcohol. The song writing is strong - she has a sound narrative sense and constructs her lyrics with emotion and cerebral soul. Excellent first album ... I'll look forward to more.