Jenny's father is a musician. While she was never pushed into doing music, her dad's rock groups and cover bands and the multitude of instruments lying around their house are two of the main reasons she got into music. Jenny picked up keyboards and piano first followed by the bass and eventually, guitar. She also used to play with old reel-to-reel tape recorders in their basement to record little songs she wrote.

As a teenager, Jenny was a classical double-bass player for the New York All-State Symphony Orchestra. She also sang in a classic rock cover band called Instant Pudding. After high school she studied vocal jazz and jazz theory & improv in New Paltz and worked as a wedding singer in New York City. During this period of her musical education, she overdosed on jazz and for several years thereafter could not stand listening to it. She then veered towards pop and trip-hop. New songs were written and recorded digitally with her computer.

With a desire for musical excellence, Jenny attended Purchase College Conservatory Of Music to study songwriting and musical arrangement, along with other high caliber singer / songwriters like Jenny Owen Youngs, Regina Spektor, and Gregory And The Hawk. The next step would be to write a full album, and this is exactly what she did after attending college. She wrote and recorded the bulk of her project in California with Jason Lader and Raine Maida. Part of the recording was done in Brooklyn with her friend Dan Romer, while the remainder was finished by Jenny on her own. The album, finished in 2009, is titled Love And Sleep and will be independently released in Spring 2010.

To play her songs live, she recently started a trio consisting of Jake Blanton (on bass and background vocals) and Mike Green (on drums and backgroung vocals). They can now be seen frequenting hot venues in Los Angeles. On top of her blooming musical career, Jenny also sings for the LA Ladies Choir and does photography on the side under the moniker Annie Racz. Her photographs have been published in established magazines like Rolling Stone, URB, and NYLON. Currently, Jenny is busy preparing for a new record alongside another project, a Lo-Fi EP.

KGRL is very proud to present our March 2010 Flower-Powered Artist, Jenny O. Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Jenny O. along with Jake Blanton and Mike Green joined KGRL in the studio for an exclusive live performance shot in high-definition video and audio. Check out our CD pre-review of Love And Sleep and excellent photos shot by our good friend Jeff Koga. There's also a comprehensive interview with Jenny O. in video, audio, & transcribed form.

Don't forget that you can request a FREE copy of the FPA live session DVDs!

There's a sense of euphoria whenever I hear an indie track with intricate arrangement. That's how I felt when I first heard the song Earth Has Won. The string arrangement makes it sound a bit orchestral. The stunning choral background voices are sublime. Of course everything would fall flat without a good melody and Earth Has Won definitely wins in this section as well. This is exactly how an album should open up, by dishing out a song of this magnitude. There's no other way to say it: Earth Has Won had won me over long before we even got the record.

C'est La Vie sounds poppier by comparison, even with the rousing string section, but I do not mean that in a negative way. I always say pop is good, in the right dosage of course. One way to describe how catchy the melody of this track is, is to liken it with songs from the Old Navy commercials. With its cute and bubbly melody, C'est La Vie will certainly catch mainstream attention.

A little bit of trip-hop/lo-fi is in the mix with the aptly-titled track, Trip. It's a less-than-three-minute slice of Jenny's eccentricity. It's weird and trippy but has a melodic structure nonetheless. It may not be on everyone's favorite-list but it gets a "B+" for bringing variety and oddity to the album.

On the other hand simplicity is the key to the next track, Home. The simple piano-and-bass arrangement in this ballad work in tandem with lush background vocals to highlight the sentimental nature of the song.

Sugar is such a sweet, sweet song. This song is all about building up a graceful crescendo and when it reaches its peak, listeners are sure to be breathless. If I have any qualms about this song, it is perhaps that it's so short (clocking in at 2½ minutes). But maybe it is short for its own good because in spite of its length, it still manages to present a full song experience worthy of endless revisiting.

At four-minutes-and-eleven-seconds in length, Progress is the longest track on the record and the most haunting composition. The first ? of this song get me seriously depressed. Jenny really succeeds at evoking the emotions on this track. You can really feel relief when the final third of the song plays.

Going exactly the opposite route of Progress' emotional highway, What Not To Do is the album's happiest-sounding track. It is an indie-pop track with a full-band sound that will have you dancing around to its dreamy melody and playful beats. It's the perfect antidote to the depression lingering from the previous track.

For acoustic-guitar lovers—and I know there are plenty of you out there—Love And Sleep has two excellent tracks for you. Ghosts and I Could Get Up are two exemplary acoustic tracks where Jenny O.'s voice and guitar-playing shine. It is during these parts of Love And Sleep that the listener is dipped in that special folk sauce. It would be easy to dismiss these tracks as slow points of the record if not for the heartfelt charm radiating from them.

Shoulder has an extremely addictive melody. It's like a huge piece of ear candy. The song is 3 minutes in length but it feels so much shorter as I am put into a trance as I listen to it. Maybe it has something to do with how abrupt the ending is. It leaves a tension with the ending note. All I want to do afterwards is press play again.

Mistakes revels in its pop-rock-edged fancy as it delivers melancholy. I bet it won't take long before the listeners are trapped in its carefully-constructed hooks. Oh and I should mention that I really love that little guitar solo near the end! The piano-driven song titled Grazie closes up our Jenny O. experience. Grazie sounds like a minute-and-a-half church choir song, which it probably should be. While I'm not exactly big on this sound, I'm sure someone out there digs this kind of music.

Love And Sleep is a well-produced richly-layered indie pop record with a dash of orchestra, a little bit of rock, a slice of trip-hop, and a generous helping of folk. Jenny is set to release the album independently soon. You've been warned. Be on the lookout for Love And Sleep. It's a solid debut that's worth the wait.

Earth Has Won 74.07Mb

Opposite Island 72.45Mb

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Listen to Jenny O.'s responses in High Quality MP3 Stream using the player below:




Transcription excerpt from the interview:

KGRL: You used to be a wedding singer. What is it like being a wedding singer?

Jenny O.: Well, it was really good practice at being a lead singer. It’s pretty easy because you just sing a few songs and someone gets up to make a toast and you have to play a tarantella or some other weird thing. There’s a lot of waiting around and everyone’s usually in a really good mood. Then you play a couple more. It’s pretty easy as long as the family is cool and is not like [unintelligible]. That was a bad answer. I’m sorry.


KGRL: Did you get to pick the songs you like to sing? Or did they give you a list of songs to sing?

Jenny O.: I never had anything to do with it. I was always just a hired singer. I just kind of showed up, did my job, sang what I was supposed to sing, and didn’t really want to get too involved.


KGRL: Was there ever any songs that made you "cringe" at the prospect of singing that particular song?

Jenny O.: Oh my God. Yes. What’s that one from The Time Warp? Rocky Horror Picture Show Time Warp. The band’s laughing. I could go the rest of my life without hearing that, or anything from Greece. There are songs like I Will Survive or Hot Stuff, but at the end of the day those are actually good songs so it’s okay. There are some that are like “Why was that such a thing?” Then there [are] really good ones too that are always really fun, like Depeche Mode or Love Shack. Huge pop hits are really fun to sing.


KGRL: Now that the album (Love And Sleep) is completed and ready for release, how do you feel about it? Is it an accurate representation of the musical direction you wanted to take?

Jenny O.: It’s the first thing that I’m proud of and ready to release into the world and say “Okay. This is something that I think I want to show that represents me.” But at the same time, a lot of the songs I wrote several years ago, and I’ve written all-new songs since then and I’m ready to make a couple of new records that I think are more in the direction that I want to move in. So it’s kind of where I’m coming from, but it’s all still relevant to me.


KGRL: How did you guys meet?

Jenny O.: I met Mike when I first came to LA. I came to LA to make my record, and I met Mike at a jam party three or four years ago.

Mike Green: That’s right.

Jenny O.: We just said “Hi” to each other several times a year for like two years until we finally hung out. Jake I met in a...backing band for this Linda Perhacs show. I should let you guys talk, but they’re bros.

Jake Blanton: Yeah. We met at the Linda Parrax show, and Mike told me that you had your own music, and I had just moved to LA and was looking for stuff to be involved in.

Mike Green: It’s so weird that he called me Mike. It’s the weirdest thing ever. Call me Foot-man if you want. I don’t give a shit.

Jake Blanton: So he told me about her music so I went to her Myspace page and I checked it out and I liked it.

Jenny O.: They cornered me at The Echo.

Jake Blanton: I sent you a Myspace message, I think, that said “I like your music. Do you have a band? Do you play shows?” And she was like, “No, not really.” I was like, “Well, do you want one?” So that was it. Pretty much from there we just booked a time to get together and jam some tunes and—

Mike Green: ...drink some beers and have some mojitos.

Jake Blanton: —the rest is history.

Jenny O.: I was totally not into the idea of asking people to play my music, and so for a long time I had trouble manifesting a band because I didn’t want it to be— I shouldn’t ask anyone to play my music. I wanted people to want to play my music.


KGRL: You guys already played live shows right?

Mike Green: One.

Jake Blanton: Oh no. More than one. No, one. That’s it.

Jenny O.: One. Yeah. We played one show.

Mike Green: One.

Jenny O.: But they’re like so good that they’re in eight bands each and busy. [That’s] really what happens. We’re playing one February 8th, which is in the past now if you’re watching this.

Mike Green: Are we?

Jenny O.: I think so.

Jake Blanton: So, thanks for coming. Thanks for coming to that. It was great to see you.

Jenny O.: Yeah. Thanks for coming February 8th. That was a really great show.

Jake Blanton: Really nice meeting you. That was really great.





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