Jess Klein

***** [Five Stars] The edge of steel to Klein's clear voice is very much in evidence on her sixth album, from impassioned opening track Blood, Sweat, Tears, through the powerful City Garden and retro-pop Make Love, to closing song World Could End which features just raw vocal and acoustic guitar. Not her most country album, but arguably her most moving and intense." - MOJO Magazine

Jess Klein's sixth album City Garden has the best roots sound of any album I've heard this year. Klein said she wanted to get something primal, akin to the recordings of last centuries bluesmen Leadbelly and Robert Johnson. Well she's certainly achieved this right from the opening track "blood, sweat, tears"' driven guitar and gospel chorus. This album is risky, up on a high wire. Listen to the raw intimacy of "all i ever had", it's right there in the hours after a break up when emotions are most taut. Klein captures this moment so perfectly you feel a slight embarrassment witnessing such a public display of private grief. Then there's sassy tracks like the sensual "make love" or the punky "world could end" This is an essential roots album. - Roots Music UK

Tiny Jess Klein has given her huge voice even more room to roam on her sixth release, City Garden. While sticking to her folk-rock style, Klein has incorporated a significant bluesy element into this collection. This trend emerges on the stripped-down "Shell & Shore" and the acoustic "All I Ever Had," a brokenhearted lament that Klein infuses with the kind of raw emotion that makes you squirm in your seat, as if intruding upon a private moment. Klein rocks out on the title track and "Middle Road," while "Swimming Pool" contains an incredibly interesting romantic metaphor. The passing years have been kind to Klein's voice. It still has a hint of the little-girl-lost, but there's a remarkable depth and resonance that's developing with age and experience. - Chart Attack

Review of Strawberry Lover:

"**** [Four Stars] She has one of those voices you want to crawl up close to the speakers to listen to: innocent but steely tough, like a compadre of Lucinda Williams and Lucy Kaplansky or a young Tift Merritt. They're promoting this as her second album though it's actually Klein's fifth - she's been around. And heading in a fine direction judging by songs like Willing to Change, Shootout at the Candy Shop and the great title track." - MOJO Magazine

"Folk gets sexy. Ex-Bostonian Jess Klein's "Strawberry Lover," the title track of her third CD, was named one of the 10 sexiest songs of the moment by the New York Daily News . . . that Klein was placed alongside Destiny's Child and 50 Cent on the list makes the hype more astounding, but doesn't detract from the lass' lovely folk-pop." - Boston Herald

"Hot, hotter, hottest: The definitive guide to who and what is sexy right now . . . Sexy songs can slink through a thousand different moods. They're as widely defined, and as fickle, as the ways of attraction itself. Most of the aural lures [listed here] can be found somewhere on the current radio dial. While each appeals to a different taste and sensibility, in the right moment they all have the skill to make you weak . . . "Candy Shop" 50 Cent with Olivia: Smutty sex, with a witty twist . . . "Soldier" Destiny's Child with T.I.: Macho sex, with the women singers ogling the stud of their dreams . . . "Strawberry Lover" Jess Klein: Yearning sex, driven by angst and prayer.. - NY Daily News

"Post-punk, country, soul? This many-sided singer does it all - beautifully... But this album isn't some skinny-tie convention. Klein's muse runs to country and country/soul, too. There are the gorgeously sad early double of the jukebox ballad Shonalee and Strawberry Lover's last waltz of the night - two songs topped in their Lucinda Williams moves only by the beer-and-tears-soaked album closer, Willing To Change - while elsewhere, Ribbons is steeped in Emmylou Harris, Soda Water has a louche saloon tempo and Shootout at the Candy Shop could have arrived on the last Tift Merritt album. To complete the package, Klein has a voice worth reckoning with and lyrics worth hearing. There's nothing splashy about either of those weapons; just simplicity done well, whether it's the waitress working the late shift at a cheap diner in Shonalee or the way Klein brings to Soda Water a drawl that says: I've been in this bar long enough to have tried all the drinks behind the bar and all the men in front of it and I've outlasted them all. -- Bernard Zuel - Sydney Morning Herald

"**** [Four Stars] On her third album, singer/songwriter Jess Klein adds a dash more pop and polish to the sweetly soulful formula of her previous discs. On 2005's Strawberry Lover, producer and former Mary Lou Lord guitarist Marc Copely wisely puts Klein's voice front and center, while also letting his tight and emphatic studio band (with Copely himself on guitar) give the songs a firmer and hookier edge, putting less folk and more rock into Klein's tunes. But Copely's production also serves the material well, and Klein's voice -- at its best sounding like the youthful middle ground between Emmylou Harris and Maria McKee -- responds well to these surroundings. With melodic accents that suggest she's been listening to a lot of classic R&B and '60s pop, Klein's tales of love both good and bad hit a fine grace note between passion and craft, and she offers just enough interesting changeups (such as the sexy reggae grove of "Soda Water" and the subtle martial undertow of "Ribbons") to give the set a compelling texture. Strawberry Lover is a solid and compelling record from an artist who continues to grow with each new album. - All Music Guide

"New York native Klein gets her hooks deep in your brain with the wistful "Shonalee" (about a late-shift waitress on South Street), the sultry "Soda Water" and the country-rockin' "Shootout at the Candy Shop." Not to mention the sweet, sexy title track and the ravishing "Ribbons." Take a bite. You won't be sorry." - Boston Herald

"Little White Dove shows the musician strumming with zest through a rumination on the realities of shattered love, with the chorus stating simply, 'Hearts break, birds fly.' Vocally, she meshes Emmylou Harris with Joan Osborne, sounding at once vulnerable and assured . . . Klein is a major talent." - Billboard