Album Notes

With this album, Pirate Jenny has created a shimmering, tightly woven cloth of haunting, angst-filled ballads of longing and loneliness such as "Never-Sea Land", intertwined with giddy, darkly humorous tracks such as "Captain Slaymore" - a rich study of a man too long at sea.

I'm a devoted fan of Pirate rock in all it's incarnations (Pirate Jenny, Hucklescary Finn, and now, Captain Bogg & Salty), but I find that this album transcends the pure delightfulness of the band's other albums and appeals to me on a deeper level. Although I love them all, this is the one that brings out the dreamer in me.

So, for all you land-locked lads & lasses stuck in this hum-drum modern world, "Slip off your boots and put on a paper crown, you'll find that you're not so boring."

--Review by Terran McCanna, 2003




With its layers of acoustic guitars, tender love songs and multi-track vocals, Never-Sea Land might just be the Pet Sounds of pirate music. This Portland Quartet spent months in the studio crafting tracks around a singular theme, setting drifting harmonies against a gorgeous piano backdrop on "Galleons of War," juxtaposing a xylophone with a Byrds-like guitar riff in "Smiling Skull" and copping '70s power chords to evoke the evil "Captain Slaymore." Rather that relying on schtick, Pirate Jenny earnestly tackles British pop and American rock while singing chanteys about dangerous sea-faring bandits or lonely men stuck on a ship and longing for the loves they've left behind. Kevin Hendrickson's complex guitar parts intermingle with Paul Iannotti's Keyboard and xylophone excursions, and the two trade lead vocal responsibilities with equally strong results. Bassist Eric Furlong and drummer John Morgan remain in the background, subtly keeping the vessel on course. The winso! me title track, laced with melodica-like keyboard and a deep-voiced chorus, points out the pirate's dilemma:

"We sail and we sail and we never see land just rum in the bottle and a pip in my hand /Never got rich 'cause we never had a plan and the treasure just rusts in the corner of the galley below."

Because of the limitations of such an angular approach, Never-Sea Land could have been a fiasco, but instead this band's dynamic debut is filled with evocative lyrics and a cornucopia of clever musical passages. Pirate Jenny seems to have come ashore to show the Beach Boys the downside of a life by the sea, albeit within a similar pop framework.

--Richard Martin, Willamette Week, 1996