Cohen, Jackie - Zagg (TRANSPARENT YELLOW VINYL) |

“More than one of Jack’s many nicknames, Zagg is also a shout out to her uncanny ability to select an unanticipated word or musical flourish, her disarming poetic acumen, her ability to zoom in and out at lightning speed and spin a phrase into a mantra, or the opposite of a mantra. Each song on this record is its own unique little world, keeping a listener delightfully off-kilter throughout the entire affair. Opening track ‘FMK’ operates likes a sonic thesis statement. For a quiet moment, Jackie’s confessing her recurring mother-in-law dreams and initiating a sudden-death round of Fuck Marry Kill. Then on a dime she somersaults into rocket-pop posture, ready to cut loose and head to the movies with her best boogie-boy: ‘Let’s go to the movies and dance a little…you can share my Twizzler…Let’s go to the movies, you can dance at the movies!!!’ The charging, industrial pop of ‘Get Out’ is augmented with punching strings that are both lovely and foreboding. In the lithe, Rickie Lee Jones-nodding ‘Yesterday’s Baby,’ a giant foot-shaped cloud looms in the mouth-shaped sky and Jackie gets microscopic — ‘Why don’t you just let it burn out/Toss that glass of wine out/Stamp that Camel Light out/Shut your mouth up shut up your mouth.’ After a few more dances, deep diaphragmatic breaths, and Blood on the Tracks winking ballads, knock-out marathon track ‘Keep Runner’ gives it straight to some Wile E. Coyote tomfool who’s out getting his butt blown up again.” The energy of the record, I think, comes from finding out Patti Smith didn’t make Horses until she was 29. Extremely influential Wiki experience. Oh, and Adam Green, my all-time favorite songwriter and artist, painted me looking like a doctrinal seer peering into a cartoon mirror for the cover.