A confident album from a band who know exactly who they are and showcase it with aplomb.
When Jenny Connors was younger, she was given the moniker Jenny Don’t due to her “strong-willed and independent nature”, so it’s really of little surprise that she would go on to fall in love with outlaw country and shape her own musical career around it. The life of Jenny Don’t and the Spurs as a band has been dotted with great highs, like getting to tour the world, but also crushing lows, like the loss of drummer Sam Henry to cancer in 2022 and Connors’ need for vocal surgery a couple of years earlier, but the band have ploughed on, and now with their fourth LP, “Broken Hearted Blues”, they’ve proved themselves a force to be reckoned with.
“I told you that I loved you and I would until I died / I didn’t think too much about it because my love is blind / And I was flyin’ high,” Connors sings with a cool disconnect on the album opener ‘Flyin’ High’, a fuzzy rocker that takes a clever look at the blindness of love in its new and exciting stages. ‘Pain in My Heart’, which Connors says was inspired by the writing style of Johnny Paycheck, sees her try her best to charm an old paramour, all the while admitting she was at fault against the background of an injection of pedal steel guitar: “And I know I treated you bad, I treated you poorly / Now I want you back what can I do / ‘Cause I only want to be with you.”
‘Jealous Heart’ has a whimsically 60s retro, surf rock feel with its driving rhythm and jangly melody, and ‘Unlucky Love’, too, rings a nostalgic tone as Connors croons of the heartbreak of loving someone who loves another: “I know it’s not me that you just can’t get enough of / I know it’s not me, it couldn’t be, I’m not the one.” ‘Broken Hearted Blue’ is not only the album’s title track, but also its standout, a driving beat moves us along like tour bus wheels on the road as Connors’ haunting, wavering vocals echo against shaky guitar reverb and she tries to resist the temptation to start a romance when life on the road offers little time for such things.“Our love’s not real, I cannot feel / This desire for you / I can only sigh, why is saying goodbye / So hard to do.”
Dripping with 70s rock, ‘One More Night’, which Connors calls her “summertime anthem”, finds her unable to pull herself away from the party (“I’m not ready to come down / I’m stayin’ up all day and one more night”), while ‘My Baby’s Gone’ leans into 50s, Buddy Holly-style rockabilly as Connors laments lost love (“Every day is blue and grey / I wish my love coulda made you stay / Without your love I’m so alone / Tell me what can I do?”). ‘Bones in the Sand’ tackles some complex emotions as Connors tries to reconcile her feelings of depression over a loss (“Bones in the sand layin’ out to dry / Suns burnin’ red hot to settle the score / Never gonna be like it was before”) with ones of hope for the future ahead (“Never gonna stop for better or worse / Gotta keep the beat even when it hurts”).
One of the sweetest songs on the album is ‘You’re What I Need’ and it’s not an ode to a lover, but to the fans that have sustained Jenny Don’t and the Spurs’ dream for all these years, making a career in music and travelling from continent to continent, a reality. “I’ve got white line fever, I haven’t slept in weeks / I couldn’t tell you the last time I felt anything other than beat,” sings Connors, “But that doesn’t matter none to me no / ‘Cause you’re what I need.” It’s heartening to hear such gratitude, but then I’d wager that the band’s fans need them just as much as they do them, and with this album, they’ve more than delivered the goods.
