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Jenn Lindsay : Uphill Both Ways
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Music for the brave, uncouth, and hopeful
Genre: Folk: Modern Folk
Release Date: 2005
Uphill Both Ways Record Label: No Evil Star Records
  • Download Album (MP3) - $16.97
  • Buy CD - $16.97
SPECIAL: 10% discount if you buy more than one copy of it today!
Preview Song Name Time Format Price Select
Uphill Both Ways 4:38 $0.99
Brain 3:15 $0.99
Belong Alone 4:22 $0.99
In Brooklyn 3:38 $0.99
Intro Memphis 0:21 $0.99
Memphis 2:46 $0.99
I Knew You 3:09 $0.99
Postolka 2:45 $0.99
It Came 2 Me 2:49 $0.99
House in New Orleans 2:40 $0.99
Christmas Song, Part 2 3:39 $0.99
In Ca 3:59 $0.99
Outro 0:20 $0.99
Outro.2 0:19 $0.99
Kitchen Sink 8:23 $0.99
preview all songs

Album Notes

"One of the Best Folk CDs of all time" -- Derek Sivers, CD Baby

"Deliciously earnest...battle hymns for the downtrodden" -- Entertainment Today

"Jenn Lindsay has her finger right on the pulse of the whole wide world of working people everywhere" -- Smother

"acoustic guitar injected with punk ethics and politically charged songwriting" -- San Diego Union-Tribune

UPHILL BOTH WAYS is the sixth studio album to come from this NYC based songwriter...after a two-year hiatus from recording in NYC, Jenn Lindsay returns to the biz with a broken heart, road stories, and the best album yet.

Jenn Lindsay plays music for the jobless, the brave, and the indignant. She was named by GO NYC Magazine as “an artist carrying the torch for music into the 21st Century,” alongside powerhouse band Sleater-Kinney. She has a degree in playwriting from Stanford University and recently dropped out of the Yale School of Drama. Her music is “a powerful call-to-arms for struggling urban artists everywhere” (Suite 101) and she’s “a talent to be reckoned with” (Splendid). Her music is featured on MTV and on compilation albums put out by the ACLU and SBS Records.

Jenn Lindsay’s sixth and seventh studio albums, Uphill Both Ways and Perfect Handful, were both financed entirely by her fans. Uphill Both Ways is a declaration of independence, a love letter, a primal scream, and a homecoming announcement (back to music and back to NYC). It’s a pageant of change, growing up, grief, and the little things that get us out of bed in the morning. Jenn Lindsay works indie all the way, recording out of a tiny apartment in Manhattan where the drum kit rests on a bedspread, the microphone pop filter is a sock stretched over a coat hanger, and percussion sounds include apples and a pen dragged over the wire of a spiral notebook. To keep costs down on her albums Uphill Both Ways and Perfect Handful, Jenn Lindsay learned to play as many instruments as she could: the guitar, piano, banjo, baritone ukulele, mandolin, drums, keyboard, xylophone and harmonica. The most difficult (no joke) was the tambourine.

Jenn’s last album, The Last New York Horn, was released by Waterbug Records in Chicago. She’s the most popular singer/songwriter you’ve never heard of, with rabid followings in Indianapolis, Amarillo TX, and Santa Cruz. “Something good has to come out of the current economic downturn, right? Well, here’s one: anti-folk singer-songwriter Jenn Lindsay.” (Village Voice)

A 2003 Boston Globe editor's pick, Jenn started gigging at age 19 while in the acting program at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, playing in British pubs where patrons ate fish sandwiches. She graduated to New York City, where initially, patrons stared into their beers, but after three years voted her the “best female singer-songwriter in NYC” (Radio Crystal Blue). Since Jenn started touring nationally, she has played her songs in exchange for free catfish in Alabama, sang to a room full of friendly cowgirls in Amarillo Texas, entertained in Vegas, and played encores to Ladyfest attendees in Memphis, Brooklyn, Santa Cruz and Ottawa. In addition to appearing at universities and coffee shops, Jenn has played LadyFests, BMI Showcases, the New York Songwriter’s Circle, political rallies at Rockefeller Center, and lots of screwball dives around the country.

In NYC, Jenn's musical community is the Antifolk scene, a hub of musicians based in the East Village's Sidewalk Cafe, who share a mutual distaste for mediocre, well-packaged mainstream music. Lindsay promotes her albums by opening for national acts Melissa Ferrick, Chris Barron (The Spin Doctors), Erin McKeown, Toshi Reagon, Girlyman, Bitch and Animal and Alix Olson at venues in the Northeast and in Canada. Her music, "delicate and tough...stark urban imagery" (San Diego Union-Tribune), showcases "a talent well-versed in the field of social protest music” (Stanford Daily).

Smother.com remarks, “Jenn Lindsay has her finger right on the pulse of the whole wide world of working people everywhere.” That’s probably due to the string of frustrating day jobs and subway-platform performances that supported her when she was not actively gigging. Even though Rambles Magazine believes that “If some of her songs were given the exposure that they deserve, New York would be one receptionist short but the folk world would be one star richer,” the impoverished struggle of being a solo artist in NYC sent Jenn out onto the road, booking her own shows, leading college workshops, and forming traveling collectives with other emerging artists.
There’s hope yet for Jenn to break through the throng. That’s because, according to Suite101.com, "She’s a DIY Renegade. Folks like Jenn Lindsay provide reason to listen to every indie disc that comes in the mail."

--Sue Maguire, Uphill Publicity, January 2006
uphill@bust.com

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REVIEWS

This is your brain on Power Pop
author: Frank Gutch
People say Jenn Lindsay is a folkie. Well, you sure as hell can't tell it from last year's CD, Uphill Both Ways. Packed full of some of the best power pop in recent years, she alternately tornadoes and dances her way through a set of originals which while brash and in-your-face are haunting and introspective. This is damn good stuff. Damn good. It's too bad that radio no longer has the power it once had because Lindsay could easily take AM by storm. Belong Alone has everything needed to catch the ear on a drive, car radio blaring--- intriguing vocals, great layout, superb organ, hooks. Forget that. The AM track has to be It Came 2 Me with its minimal but full production (how do you do that?) and unique phrasing on the chorus (“It came to me like I knew-ew-ew I was dyin'/It came to me like I was al-al-already dead”) and the killer break courtesy of the Beatles (“I was alone I took a ride I didn't know what I would find they-ey-eyair”). Stone killer. The title track is no slouch, either. Riding on choogling rhythm guitar, Lindsay lays vocals as unproduced as they could possibly be at your feet (well, the feet of your ears) and crawls under your musical skin. Beware of itch. As for Brain, whew. Brains on love are a bit harsher than brains on drugs, I guess. Oh, it's not all rippin' pop. Lindsay turns it down (at least the volume) and takes a few sidesteps. I still haven't quite figured I Knew You yet, but it doesn't matter. It's good without my cranial ablutions. Lindsay's sense of lyric would make one laugh if not for the purity of delivery (rhyming anemone with enemy is classic). Christmas Song, Part 2 is a treasure, a winter song for the lost and lonely in pop idiom. You have to hear it to understand. At approximately the same time (and possibly during the same sessions), Lindsay and Mason were recording tracks which evolved into the simultaneously released Perfect Handful. A bit more acoustic than Uphill, it has a slightly different feel but no less of the Lindsay creativity. The first track, Got My Baby, is about real love (which turns out to be a guitar, blowing to hell the male ego's obsession with whatever the hell it is obsessed with). Patience and Prudence could not have done much better on Bones than did Lindsay, it having that semi-fifties P&P lead-in to crunching chorus. Good Thing is so unassuming and a bit bumpkin that the novelty sucks you in whether you like it or not (“It's a good thiiiiing, too/I wouldn't wanna loooooose, you”). Not many show a sense of desolation which almost leaves you joyful, but Lindsay does. The plucked acoustic guitar beneath a voice of heartbreak (not to mention spot on harmonica) give Rain its own dimension. And don't ask me how Lindsay can give equal amounts of apathy and enthusiasm like she does on Don't You Know, but she does. There is something very appealing about Lindsay's music and while I am not quite sure what it is, I have no time to ponder. She has released a plethora of CDs over the past few years and it will take time to get through those. Maybe after I've perused those, I'll think about it. That is, unless a new Lindsay disc hits the streets (we can hope). Tell you what. This new world of music has connections even AM radio at its peak had. You can sample Lindsay's work at cdBaby. Two minutes may not give you a real idea of what she does (except maybe for the really short tracks), but it will give you some idea. Jenn Lindsay has something outside the norm. How will you know what you're missing until you give it a try?
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It feels good to me. Really, really good.
author: Acoustic Music -- Frank Gutch Jr.
There was something vaguely familiar in Jenn Lindsay's music when I first heard Uphill Both Ways and it took me a few listens to nail it down. It turns out Jenn Lindsay plays (wait for it!) New Wave! I tossed genres around to see how they fit and none seemed to corner exactly what it was until the late 70s popped up and that was it! Jenn Lindsay, my alternative pop-ites, plays music for which Ken Barnes and the late Greg Shaw of "Who Put the Bomp" lived—60s influenced pop with creative flare. Lindsay displays just the kind of creativity and flare that could well have garnered her a cover of the rejuvenated "Bomp" zine, the project Shaw was working on when he so unfortunately left us. Her music fits all of his criteria—melody, hooks and drive. Indeed, Shaw would have taken this CD on himself, not trusting anyone else to point out the positives: the Percy Sledge-like organ of "Belong Alone" giving way to the perfect three-chord chorus behind the bopping rhythm; the punchy acoustic rhythm of Brain which echoes the production of some of the best the 60s and 70s had; the fast, upbeat rhythms of the acoustic guitar and Lindsay's intriguing song stutter of Uphill Both Ways, not to mention the intriguing harmony vocals. What would have really done it, though, would have been the magnificent pop opus, It Came 2 Me, which mixes elaborate production with voice sans production until the end, a strange but captivating combination—and who could resist her inclusion of two lines from Lennon and McCartney's Got To Get You Into My Life as she crescendos "I was alone, I took a ride/I didn't know what I would find there". This CD is worth it for that alone. She isn't all power pop, of course. She folds House of the Rising Sun and Amazing Grace into a strange folk song lamenting the tragedy of recent New Orleans (and the Bush Administration's bungled response) which she titled House In New Orleans. Christmas Song, Part 2" has a folky Hem sound and shows that she can feel as well as dance. If that doesn't satisfy your folk craving, she goes overboard in the monumental eight minute-plus Kitchen Sink in which she laments love gone bad with only acoustic guitar, occasional added voices and a classic sense of humor. And there is the eery "Postolka", minor chords and weird chord progressions and all. Sonics freaks might pick this apart of they heard it, but I contend that the production is spot on. You can't pull off something this creative in a sterile environment, just as you couldn't in the 60s and mid- to late-70s. It is the feel of the music as much as the music itself which gives this CD its edge. It feels good to me. Really, really good. Until I heard this, Maggi, Pierce and E.J. headed my list of groups to see. Now I have fantasies of a double bill. I don't even care who opens for who.
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she feels more like an old friend at the table
author: The Red Alert -- Adam McKibbin
NYC’s Sidewalk Café has been one of those few venues that have been able to incubate an entire subgenre; they can’t take credit for inventing “anti-folk,” but today’s practitioners in the Sidewalk Café orbit offer a refreshing spin in an era when gloss and irony are de rigueur. On her sixth record, Uphill Both Ways, frequent Sidewalker Jenn Lindsay tries a few new tricks, but none of them involve pandering to the A&R reps who doubtlessly sniff around the scene (and if they weren’t sniffing already, they should be kicked into action by Sidewalk alum Regina Spektor’s oft-brilliant new album, which serves as a testament that the majors don’t always muck things up). Listening to a Lindsay album for the first time is a bit like being seated next to a stranger at a dinner party and finding out a lot about her dating history and her general worldview before the salads are cleared. After six albums, then, she feels more like an old friend at the table. Whereas Fired! took aim at the perils of the 9-to-5 rat race, Uphill Both Ways—while not so unified in its theme—is largely informed by a Big Breakup. The heartache culminates in what feels like the centerpiece of the album, even though it comes right at the end. “Kitchen Sink,” which attaches Lindsay’s sweetly affecting and unadorned vocals with lyrics that are so personal and openly transparent that they make diary entries look like Burroughs. “I gave you great sex and some pretty awesome presents,” she sings over a simple strum. The bold stroke is that there’s no pretense of making this into a universal song that vaguely applies to everyone. It’s for one person, and the fact that the rest of us are listening in seems to be merely incidental. While “Kitchen Sink” is the most stop-you-in-your-tracks piece of Uphill Both Ways, the tracks that most demand repeat listens are the ones that kick it up-tempo, like the gently propulsive title track that opens the record, and the rousing, self-reflective “It Came 2 Me.” Less successful is the Katrina-inspired reworking of “House of the Rising Sun” and “Amazing Grace.” Social consciousness has been one of Lindsay’s consistent strengths, and her pointed lyrical content about politicians asleep at the wheel is welcome, but the musical approach feels a bit cursory. As the single “big issue” song on an album otherwise driven largely by a personal love story, it has a disorienting effect.
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Punk Folk Infusion...kudos for the singer/songwriter's creativity and originalit
author: RocknWorld -- Ashleigh Hill
If it is at all possible for pop, punk, and folk to gather together in LP form, Jenn Lindsay has done it. Uphill Both Ways is by no means a groundbreaking performance, but kudos for the singer/songwriter's creativity and originality. The record's highs start and end the album. "Uphill Both Ways" proves catchy with its hand-clapping background and stuttered vocals begging for a repeat. The slow and steady "Kitchen Sink", an 8 plus minute song, continues on and on, adding to the biting love story. Sadness grows into anger, and Lindsey tells the whole story, and then some, just like irritated girls are supposed to. Here, Uphill Both Ways offers up its very own quintessential bar sing-along.
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