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She may not be merely the femme counter to Franklin Bruno's pedagogic look-ma-no-monosyllabic-words wordsmith, as some would slag it, but there's little doubt Jenny Toomey's records are works of considered lyrical conceit in which the pen is indeed mightier than the sword. Toomey loves to lean song against scenario to make great dichotomous ruses, presenting pitiable emotional supplications that are really rather self-assured. She may make out she's merely meekly hoping for your sympathy, the artistic process being one big dear-diary, but Toomey, writer, knows all about the public space as art space. Thus, in this forum, her tales of boys-done-doing-her-wrong aren't so much the teary tales of defeat, but the ultimate acts of revenge: proud and poetically-penned in-public fuck-yous delivered as tunes you can tap your toe to. I'm still wondering who was the bitch that ended up with her eyes scratched out in song after serving as the inspiration for Liquorice's "Team Player," and now I get to wonder who the "Word Traffic" guy is, the storytold sap who had more records than words and played them instead of speaking. This is a place where art-in-life meets life-in-art, yet Toomey somehow doesn't make it seem so raw and real that she had to spit this shit out or she'd burst. That, of course, is one of those ludicrous standards that listeners sometimes demand a record be judged by, for some nebulous reason born of unknown whim — that, like, the artist, like, needs to sound like they're really fucked up — and it seems insane to complain that someone sounds too together. But Toomey plays that card; she covers the Impressions' "Fool for You" when it's clear that's she's nobody's fool. Her voice rings so clear, and all the help of all the famous friends on the record — notables being Edith Frost and the Aluminum Group's John Navin singing, and Ida's Daniel Littleton playing some real nice guitar (esp. on "Needmore PA") on the cuts recorded in Chicago, and about half of Lambchop showing up on the disc done in Nashville — just makes the album sound bold and strong and confident and pretty. And you can't get no thrills of schadenfreude when that's the case. So, like, I'm sure Jenny Toomey could kick Conor Oberst's ass — and maybe she has — but I get the feeling hearing Conor cry about it would be more fun than hearing Toomey gloat about it.
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