ALBUM REVIEW: Courtney Jaye Shares a Bold Spiritual Vision on ‘Hymns and Hallelucinations’
Gentle guitars eddy under Courtney Jaye’s soaring vocals on “The Kingdom is Inside of Me,” the opening track of Hymns and Hallelucinations, her stunning new album. Climbing from a soothing lullaby to a resounding operatic embrace of the darkness and light of the soul, the song serves as invocation to Jaye’s cinematic spiritual journey. The 10 songs move through the stages of Jaye’s pilgrimage, from “the awakening” and “the journey” to “death” and “rebirth.”
The minor-chord title track shines with the hallucinatory quality of a dream, Jaye’s vocals floating over spiraling guitar strums to move from self-doubt and fear — of self and the judgment of the world — to an exclamation at the song’s close: “Through it all I walk alone / My love is mine / My love is strong / I am not done / I am not gone / I’m right where I belong.”
There’s a hint of Lesley Gore in “Three,” a shimmering soul ballad on which Jaye’s vocals escalate over the musical conversation between sparkling guitar vibrato and wailing B3 strains. The song cannily plays on the legendary period of three days or three years that in many religious stories follows a call or a death: “Three years since it happened / Three years waking up / Oh three years, look who I’ve become.” The hypnotic, down-to-the-bone, seductive “Rise Like the Spirit” uncovers the intimate interplay between the sensual and the spiritual, reminding us that sexual awakening opens the door to spiritual awakening: “You gotta rise like the spirit / You gotta let your body feel it / And move / You gotta rise like the spirit / You know the rhythm of the Maker is in you.”
The bright “Take It Up With the Lord” proclaims the death of a mind-numbing judgmental religious way of life that Jaye leaves behind as she sets out to be reborn into a spiritually liberating affirmation of the world, self, and others. She delivers her gospel shout of rebirth on the a cappella “Just Say Yes,” replete with a chorus of hand claps and call-and-response background vocals.
The 10 songs on Hymns and Hallelucinations combine the arching, soaring praise of a shouting spiritual — a “hallelujah” — with the startlingly lucid revelatory insights about self and world that break open the soul to transcendence: “hallelucinations.” Jaye’s operatic vocals warmly invite the listener to accompany her on her journey.
Hymns and Hallelucinations is out May 20 on Tropicali Records.