Newcomer Jessie Baylin not quite on fire, but certainly hot

Jessie Baylin Verve Forecast Rocks Like: Norah Jones, a young Stevie Nicks With refreshing,… Jessie Baylin Verve Forecast Rocks Like: Norah Jones, a young Stevie Nicks With refreshing, wide-eyed optimism, Jessie Baylin asserts her desire to deeply experience the world in her first widely released album, Firesight. The disc draws upon country’s down-to-earth origins, pop’s catchy hooks and jazz’s sophisticated arrangements to create a unique compositional sound. Baylin establishes her no-regrets style of leaping into the world and into the album in the first song, ‘See How I Run.’ Here she sings that she, ‘Won’t look back / There’s nothing to see,’ and that she will have no regrets, ‘Because a risk is nothing / There’s nothing [she] can lose.” Baylin’s child-like outlook wavers between naive openness and mature resilience.’ Her controlled yet emotional vocals lend Baylin’s lyrics, which are often innocently simple, a natural wisdom. Effortlessly sophisticated and slightly intoxicating, Baylin’s voice, to use the words of comparable singer/songwriter Norah Jones, sounds like it is ‘drenched in wine.’ Her vocals spill over the album and soak into the songs, saturating each word’s meaning. Baylin’s voice relaxes muscles and calms impulsive movements as it flows like red wine through the body’s veins. Baylin began her singing career at her parent’s restaurant/jazz bar, the Fire Sight Inn in Gillette, N.J., which inspires the title of her new album, paying homage to her past while anticipating her future. After high school, the 24-year-old singer/songwriter moved to Los Angeles to escape her hometown.’ This move enabled Baylin to record her first album, You, available exclusively at iTunes, which limited its circulation but created buzz around her name. The newborn outlook of Firesight likely emerges from Baylin’s recent engagement to Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill.’ The album reflects where Baylin is in her life by describing the feelings of every young adult who anticipates future’s secrets.’ While the generic nature of Baylin’s music allows for a wide audience to relate to her music, it also means that her lyrics are often cliche and too abstract to visualize. Although Firesight inspires feeling while it plays, Baylin’s music fails to fully absorb into consciousness.’ In ‘Leave Your Mark,’ Baylin expresses a desire for a lover to leave his or her mark so that she ‘can always find [him]’ and his memory in her heart.’ Baylin is aware of the importance of leaving a permanent mark in memory, yet she does not quite achieve this herself. Baylin’s music frustrates, because she communicates mature feelings, but Firesight often lacks the full impact her talent is capable of producing.’ If she pushes herself a bit further, Baylin’s voice has the ability to infect the bloodstream and become part of the body’s permanent memory.’ As they are, the feelings in Firesight cast ephemeral shadows across the mind, but inevitably their abstract substance forces them to evaporate almost as quickly as they appear. There are moments when Baylin’s music seems to capture very fragile, very human moments, revealing a glimpse of her music’s possibilities.’ When Baylin sings that, ‘Living’s like kissing in the dark / Looking for lips that make a kind mark’ in ‘Tick Tock,’ I am inspired to fall in love completely, with no reservations.’ And when Baylin sings, ‘It’s so charming / Being broken / Something so disarming / And unspoken’ in ‘By Any Rules,’ it makes me want to have my heart broken. And even if it’s only in that moment, that’s something.