by Sabrina Cofer (@sabcofer)
Drive past empty midwestern fields and stumble upon Tenci’s ghost town. The once bustling stop during the gold rush is now left with an abandoned general store, saloon, and the occasional tumbleweed. My Heart Is An Open Field is the debut LP from Chicago’s Jess Shoman, released by Keeled Scales this past June. Mixed by Spencer Radcliffe, the record’s credits list is small, which helps produce its insular sound. Lonesome croons rub up and push against homey echoes of fingers on guitar strings or shakes of a tambourine, which give it its own character, aesthetic, and realm. Even though the musicality is expansive, the album-world that Shoman creates is sturdy and intimate, like its own quiet universe.
“Earthquake,” the opener, sets the record’s precedent: low and high electric guitar plucks answer back to each other until dispersing into Shoman’s repetitious finger-picking, a circular rhythmic style that’s the backbone of the whole album. Murmuring bass, steady drums, and lonely, atmospheric lead guitar complement Shoman’s words: “Can you stay? / Oh, honey I’ll keep a mug warm for you / So you’ll stay.” The warble in Shoman’s voice as she sings predicates the album’s tone; it’s been hailed as indie folk, but Shoman’s delivery is steeped in a country timbre.
“Blue Spring” feels like the thesis statement of 2020’s April. Sorrow and secluded cello hums against acoustic guitar, until it closes with pinging, vibrating vocals that repeat, “Please don’t forget me, please don’t forget me / I’m good I’m here, I’m good I’m here.” It fades into a voicemail message from Shoman’s grandma, who calls to say she loves her. The feedback and crackle underscore the distance, saturating you with the blue of isolation and longing.
Just past the halfway point is “Forgot My Horse’s Name,” one of my favorites, and the best use of Shoman’s guitar style. Here the electric guitar’s lilt rolls like a country waltz as Shoman laments over not remembering a horse’s name, despite a day of riding through trees and sipping at creek water, flies buzzing all the while. If this album is Tenci’s ghost town, this song is the live band playing to no one at the dance hall; you can picture the make-believe townsfolk swaying close atop dusty wooden floors and beneath wavering streamers until the memory fades out.
Some of the best lyrics come in “Joy 2,” the follow-up to “Joy,” where Shoman sings: “I’m gonna find you / Here and there / In the trees and the air / In the lines in my hands / In my grandma’s laugh / In a metronome / When I’m finally alone / And I pick at my skin / To see what’s there.” Much of the album’s lyricism lies in how the outdoors—fields (duh), birds, dirt, flowers—follow us inside. Shoman captures how relationships, people, feelings get stuck in the environment around us, whether it be in tangled hair or the laugh of a relative reminding you of someone you had to leave behind.
The record closes with the title track. It mirrors the opener in how it builds; acoustic guitar, flute, and synth come alive together, needling at your ears. While “Earthquake” zooms out to introduce us to this world, “My Heart Is An Open Field” pulls you in close to say goodbye. Shoman’s vocals are pushed to the front of the track, a personal farewell. You can hear each syllable, how her teeth close around the last lines: “My heart’s a field / my heart, my heart.”
On her debut, Tenci crafts an album that’s at once wistful, solitary, warm, and tender. Shoman weaves together tracks that encapsulate how people and environments stick to us, creating a place of vulnerability and entanglement forever frozen in time. My Heart Is An Open Field builds a sound worth staying in, illustrating the power of an open heart.