In the aftermath of releasing her last studio album, 2004's luminous Back in the Circus, Jonatha Brooke embarked on a creative journey that paved the way for her latest chef d'oeuvre, Careful What You Wish For. The CD expresses anger and beauty, offers cautionary advice and uplifting redemption. It's edgy and dark, sarcastic about fame and celebrity, yet hopeful despite the ravages of heartbreak. It begins on a highly charged note of dreams unraveling (the title tune) and ends in a safe haven of the sweet and simple life (“Never Too Late,” a gem that features Brooke solo on acoustic guitar).
Issued on Brooke's own Bad Dog Records label and co-produced by the legendary Bob Clearmountain, Careful What You Wish For serves as the culmination of two years of new adventures, including her triumphant 10-night residency in support of Circus at The Anspacher Theater in the Public Theater complex in New York, her solo opening-act duties for singer Joe Cocker's tour from May to October 2005, and some new song writing collaborations. The latter experience directly impacted the tone for Careful What You Wish For. “Writing with some other people gave me the opportunity to get out of my chick headspace and try something new,” says Brooke, who enlisted songwriting help from her old friend and collaborator Eric Bazilian, who co-produced four of the tunes. “I worked on songs written from different personae, trying out characters, though, of course, there's a part of me in each of the tunes too. And the music really rocked.”
Brooke notes that “Circus was intentionally intimate and sonically smaller, more petite, simple. So, I thought, since I don't like repeating myself from album to album, let's really rock this one out. The vibe is all about busting out, being on the edge, playing with great abandon to see what we could come up with.”
“I'll Leave the Light On,” a song of “darkened rooms” and “empty promises,” and “Keep the River on the Right,” a life-come-undone tune, were written as if from someone else’s perspective and forced me to examine my own attitudes and desires as well as my own sense of success and celebrity and achievement. There's always that shadow. So, for these songs, I'm also confronting the shadow side of me. They're honest, raw, close to the bone.”
Careful What You Wish For is Brooke's ninth album, dating back to her early-'90s folk-pop band, The Story. The harmony-rich duo released two superb albums for Elektra, Grace in Gravity (initially issued by Green Linnet) and The Angel in the House, before parting paths in 1994. Brooke then launched her solo career in 1995 with Plumb (MCA/Blue Thumb), followed two years later by 10 Cent Wings (MCA/Refuge). In 1998, she broke from major-label constraints, becoming a pioneer of DIY indie labels by forming Bad Dog Records, which released Jonatha Brooke Live (1998), Steady Pull (2001), Circus (2004), and the DVD/CD Live in New York (2005).
Brooke's songs have been featured in numerous network TV programs including “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”, “Dawson’s Creek”, “Charmed”, “Related”, “Once and Again”, as well as “The Olympics”. She wrote “I’ll Try” for the Disney animated sequel “Peter Pan Return To Neverland”.
While Brooke's alluring vocals and captivating songs make for a sunny-side-up sensibility, there's a pronounced dark lining of longing and heartbreak in her music. “I have a great life and I love my career,” she says. “I'm pretty much a happy person, but my music has an underbelly that's informed by the rough spells in my life.”
Careful What You Wish For features 11 new songs. The sessions, featuring her core band of guitarist Goffrey Moore, bassist Darren Embry and drummer Rich Mercurio as well as various guests, were largely recorded live with minimal overdubs.
“Live is best,” says Brooke, who does multi-instrument duty with acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin, piano, mellotron, Wurlitzer organ and percussion. “We recorded eight songs in five days and caught a vibe. On some occasions I was teaching the band a new song right before we recorded it. We'd play a couple of takes and in some instances use the first take for the album. I wanted to make the songs sound real, to keep an edge and soul, to not worry about being perfect. As a result, this was the easiest record I've ever made.”
Careful What You Wish For's rocking title track, a tune about the trimmings and trappings of celebrity, opens with a melodic acoustic line that detonates with a rocking bang when the band arrives. “I had that sound of a triplet thing played with a stack of Marshall amps in my head for a month,” says Brooke. “I'm singing in a rocky, bluesy way, but that triplet over a 4/4 beat really makes it for me.
“Beautiful Girl,” is another edgy look at how beauty and celebrity can so easily shatter. “This is about a combination of people I know, but I also had Jessica Simpson in mind,” says Brooke. “She's so talented and so beautiful, but it seems like things are really spinning out of control for her. It's a honey-be-careful wake-up song.” The same theme pervades “Baby Wait” with the lyrics “You can't carry on this way another day/I can't stand to see you fall and break.” The tune features an arrangement with bassoon and bass clarinet shadings that Brooke had been hearing in her head from the moment she started writing the song.
Gil Goldstein arranged the horn parts (clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, French horn, euphonium) on the lyrical gem of the collection, “After the Tears,” a song Brooke wrote while noodling with a mandolin in a guitar shop. “The mandolin was slightly out of tune, so I tuned the lowest string down a half step and found this song,” she says. “I had to buy the mandolin to take it home to finish the song. It's inspired by a close friend who was killed in a car crash, but it can easily be read as a relationship breakup song too.”
Another beauty is Brooke's first French-language song, the quietly melodic “Je N'Peux Pas Te Plaire,” which translated means, no matter what I do I can't please you.” Brooke explains that the song came to her while she was in a hotel in Paris: “I was taking a bath and it was coming out from the walls in French. It's such a different singing exercise for me working with such a pretty-sounding language.”
Jonatha Brooke the poet comes center stage on the he-said/she-said song, “Hearsay,” with the great couplet: “And in the end, does anybody really win/There's no poetry when there's poison in the wind.” The theme of forgiveness in this song resurfaces in the next, “Forgiven,” that clangs with electric guitar. “That's the shadow side of me,” says Brooke. “It's all about not knowing what's up around the next bend and having a tenuous hold on control. I really wanted that guitar part to drive this sense into your brain. It has to hurt. The electric guitar gives an exciting pull and is so evocative of the lyrics.”
Two of Brooke's most personal songs are saved for the end of the CD. Teeming with Biblical imagery, “Prodigal Daughter” is Brooke's cathartic break from her religious background, and the closer, ”Never Too Late for Love,” is a gorgeous love song written for her husband as a birthday gift. “I was in the studio with Bob, and finished this song after dinner and some great red wine,” she says. “I recorded two takes, but used the first because its vibe couldn't be topped. My voice is cracking a little and I'm searching for chords on the guitar because I just wrote it. It's about the small town in the south of France where we were married.” After singing about all the excesses and disappointments of beauty and celebrity earlier on the album, the tune is the perfect antidote to the thematic material that precedes it. It's a safe landing. “It's about comfort and simplicity expressed,” says Brooke.
In reflecting on Careful What You Wish For, the vibrant next chapter in the evolution of her artistry, Brooke says, “It's definitely a step up for me. Singing these songs kicked my ass. To inhabit these new characters who have a different persona than me pushed me a very new way. I'm on the edge on this album, and I love it.”
Reviews:
"Ms. Brooke slips considerable craftmanship into her songs. Skill and ambition remain, even as her songs have turned to pop forms, showing a fondness for the Beatles and Joni Mitchell. Now and then they also hint at Suzanne Vega, Alanis Morissette, Ani DiFranco and Neil Young. As the music climbed to graceful resolutions, the implicit promise was that romance can, too."
- Jon Pareles, New York Times
“Jonatha Brooke has been making intimate, well-crafted records for years. Back in the Circus is stocked with lovingly detailed songs. Brooke’s fireplace folk may be just what battered heads and lonely hearts need.”
- Rolling Stone