On Thursday night I went along to Jess McAvoy's album launch at the Hopetoun in Surry Hills. Jess is a Melbourne based singer / songwriter and performer of "melodic hook-laden indie/pop tunes".

The new album "Into The Dark" on the surface is an acoustic pop album, but has a real bluesy soulfulness in parts. I'm liking it a lot, particularly "New Amsterdam" which is probably the darkest track.

The gig itself was good, I usually don't enjoy gigs at the Hopetoun. I love an appreciate the fact that they are putting on live original music every night, but I find the venue itself cramped and the sound is almost always shit. Mainly because bands play and are mixed louder than the room can handle before the sound bounces everywhere and turns into aural mush.

Jess was playing with an acoustic three piece band (her with guitar, an double bass player and a drummer) so managed to sound great. The only problem with not being too loud is that at times she was in danger of being drowned out by a large number of, for want of a better word, asshats who seemed to go out to hear the sounds of their own voices rather than the music.

I did miss the extra instrumentation from the album at times. There are some nice textures provided by organ and electric guitar which would have been nice live, but the economic reality of touring as an indepenant artist don't make these things possible.

All in all though, I'm really enjoying the album and I hope Jess has some success with it. Definitely worth heading over to her site and checking everything out, including the video for "See how I go", which has been getting a few plays on Rage.

Finally, I have to finish up with some wanton gear porn! Jess was playing a really nice looking and sounding thin body acoustic guitar, a Martin X-Series.

Nice!