Loves It!, YAY!
It’s hard not to enthuse over an album entitled YAY! This is a folk-pop duo with presence and verve. The female vocalist, Jenny Parrott, is well-remembered from the New Haven scene of a few years ago, though Loves It! now calls Austin, Texas their homebase. Vaughn Walters, who like Parrott both sings and plays guitar, hails from West Virginia. The interplay between Parrott (who handles most of the lead singing) and Walters (who helps with harmonies and gentle guitar details) is honest and refreshing. They’re so fresh and perky, in fact, that YAY! could be mistaken for a chidren’s-music album. (The album cover design doesn’t hurt that impression.) Even the sadder, reflective songs like “Me Alone” have an amiable showiness to them.
But this is grown-up music—luxuriant and articulate, about stuff like Bobby Kennedy (a biographical ditty which ends with a potent wail of “California!”), second-guessing love relationships and the fluidity of musical styles (the complex “Dixieland,” shown in the video above).
The recordings clearly suggest that Loves It! must be an engaging, uplifting live act. Their affection for performing, for adding charming little frills to their arrangements, is abundant. They want to win you over with chipper charm, not pomp or bluster, and they succeed.
Makes you wonder: when did the majority of folk acts today forget the whole “ingratiating” aspect of what they do?